Press "Enter" to skip to content

Richard Halloran Owns Home Computer

This news story from 1981 is a fascinating piece of the past’s future, and eerily prescient regarding the eventually demise of print media and availability of online versions. And check the rotary phone he dials placing the receiver on the cups of the modem. Pretty cool.

Two hours to download the online edition? How much data could a text-only version of a local newspaper like the SF Chronicle actually contain? A few hundred kilobytes at the high end? I make you load that much in utterly unimportant image data every single time you look at The Black Laser and I bet you never even bat an eye. It’s amazing how far the technology has come since then, a mere 28 years. It really forces on you the fact that we have no idea what technology will be like 28 years from now. I fully expect replicants by 2019, and that’s only a decade. 28 years is 2.8 times as long! Maybe they’ll have Nexus 16.8s!

2 Comments

  1. Billy Rueben Billy Rueben January 31, 2009

    Best Part is the first words of the report: “Seventeen Floors up at his FASHIONABLE North Beach Apartment.”
    The image that accompanies the narration is amazing. That, more than anything else, shows how much time has truly passed.

    • The Wizard The Wizard Post author | January 31, 2009

      Yeah, I bet it’s surrounded by strip clubs now.

Tell me what you think.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.