The iPad is a futuristic looking device, but imagining something much like it isn’t terribly new. In the video below, the former newspaper giant Knight-Ridder shows its vision of the newspaper’s future – delivered by tablet computer. Circa 1994. It’s amazing how much the company got right. The tablet’s user experience, design and impact on media as a whole sound just about right. The timeframe predicted was 10 years too early. And the vision of tablets used without wireless content downloads is amusing, isn’t it?
We found the video today on the blog of futurist Ross Dawson, who found it via Bronwen Clune. As Dawson points out in his blog post, such prescience wasn’t enough to save Knight-Ridder, which was bought out by McClatchy Company in 2006.
Could these insightful pioneers have foreseen a time when Apple was building not the Newton, first released the year before this video, but a tablet that would become one of the very fastest selling consumer electronics devices in history?
It makes me want to go look for crazy futuristic prototypes bandied about today, some of which might change the world in 15 years – or less.
