As I’m going along with the reading here, one of the things I’m noticing is again, how out-of-date a book written just a few years ago has become. Negroponte talks about several different technologies, and how some are logistically impossible, at least at the time he wrote the book. But look at p.153, for example.
“Imagine a future in which your interface can read every newswire and every newspaper and catch every TV and radio broadcast on the planet, and then construct a personalized summary. This kind of newspaper is printed in an edition of one.”
Every morning, when I double-click on Firefox, my home page comes up, and gives me something fairly close to what Negroponte is describing. While my “interface,” otherwise known as My Yahoo!, isn’t nearly as sophisticated that it can catch everything he’s describing, it comes pretty close. I have a few dozen headlines, all neatly summarized, and all personalized by me. My own custom-edition newspaper, bringing me the morning’s politics, business, and sports news is delivered to me every morning. But even better, I need not even step outside of my house for it, or even need to be home for that matter. With wi-fi access growing more and more common, I can be miles and miles from home but still have instant access to my custom newspaper.
And as Negroponte also notes, someone reading a paper at 7 a.m. isn’t going to want (or have access to) the same content as someone reading a paper at 7 p.m. But my instant news comes updated, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It is fascinating to see that so much at the time this book was written, wasn’t quite a reality. But now, so much more of what’s described is real. And it does make one ponder upon how technology today will continue to improve in that same time span.
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