
Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book - everbody
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/01/09/ebook/
======
ajuc
Similar prediction of ebook readers by Stanisław Lem in 1961 book "Return from
the stars". He called them "optons". He also predicted audiobooks and called
them "lectons". And Amazon :)

> I spent the afternoon in a bookstore. There were no books in it. None had
> been printed for nearly half a century. And how I have looked forward to
> them, after the micro films that made up the library of the Prometheus! No
> such luck. No longer was it possible to browse among shelves, to weigh
> volumes in hand, to feel their heft, the promise of ponderous reading. The
> bookstore resembled, instead, an electronic laboratory. The books were
> crystals with recorded contents. They can be read the aid of an opton, which
> was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch,
> successive pages of the text appeared on it. But optons were little used,
> the sales-robot told me. The public preferred lectons - like lectons read
> out loud, they could be set to any voice, tempo, and modulation. Only
> scientific publications having a very limited distribution were still
> printed, on a plastic imitation paper. Thus all my purchases fitted into one
> pocket, though there must have been almost three hundred titles. My handful
> of crystal corn - my books. I selected a number of works on history and
> sociology, a few on statistics and demography, and what the girl from Adapt
> had recommended on psychology. A couple of the larger mathematical textbooks
> - larger, of course, in the sense of their content, not of their physical
> science. The robot that served me was itself an encyclopedia, in that - as
> it told me - it was linked directly, through electronic catalogs, to
> templates of every book on earth. As a rule, a bookstore had only single
> "copies" of books, and when someone needed a particular book, the contents
> of the work was recorded in a crystal.

> The originals - Crystomatrices - were not to be seen; they were kept behind
> pale blue enamel the steel plates. So a book was printed, as it were, every
> time someone needed it. The question of printings, of their quantity, of
> their running out, had ceased to exist. Actually, a great achievement, and
> yet I regretted the passing of books.

[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1024](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1024)

~~~
aerovistae
That’s incredible.

~~~
devereaux
I have always thought science is inspired by fiction.

Cellphones are nothing less than a better communicator, Bluetooth badges are
even available on thinkgeek!

~~~
lsc
But a communicator is primarily a voice communication device. If I were to say
a cellphone is like a star trek device, I'd say it's more like an undersized
PADD

(and yeah, I maybe agree that the Apple engineers may have a lot of TNG. The
'too lazy to make actual buttons' set designers, I think, actually inspired
apple; it really is a lot easier to design a muti-use interface if the
"buttons" are all behind a glass touchscreen.)

~~~
pseudalopex
Feature phones still exist. The Motorola StarTAC was very much like a
communicator.

I think the iPhone was more inspired by existing products and their obvious
drawbacks. The Newton was more like a PADD than the iPhone is.

The story I've heard about the TNG set design is "Gene Roddenberry thought it
looked more futuristic". Calling it laziness is insulting.

------
kevsim
Nancy Bass Wyden, the daughter of the Fred Bass (who gave the prediction in
question) is now the owner of her father’s bookstore. She is the wife of
senator Wyden and an outspoken critic of the tax breaks given to big tech,
particularly Amazon: [https://cnn.com/2019/01/08/opinions/amazon-big-tech-
threat-c...](https://cnn.com/2019/01/08/opinions/amazon-big-tech-threat-
cities-bass-wyden/index.html)

------
ascar
At my university there are several ironic and funny posters with quotes about
mispredictions on display at the walls of the big lecture hall of the
mechanical engineering building.

My favorite one is from Gottlieb Daimler 1901:

 _" The global demand for automobiles will not exceed one million - at least
because of a lack of available chauffeurs."_ [1]

He is the founder of the predecessor of todays Daimler AG, which owns
Mercedes-Benz.

[1] losely translated from German: _" Die weltweite Nachfrage nach
Kraftfahrzeugen wird eine Million nicht überschreiten - allein schon aus
Mangel an verfügbaren Chauffeuren."_

~~~
elymar
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

~~~
ascar
1889: _“Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time.
Nobody will use it, ever.”_ — Thomas Edison.

~~~
walrus01
2019: I have a 100% DC powered datacenter, but the power certainly gets to its
location via AC.

~~~
zuron7
Transmission could be done via DC too, and there are quite a few benefits to
it. The only field left to conquer is generation of electricity, looks like
that's going to be in AC.

~~~
walrus01
It is, but rather difficult and expensive for short to medium distances.
Submarine power cables are often HVDC.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie)

~~~
howard941
Great article. The thing's grounding system is lustworthy:

The Sylmar grounding system is a line of 24 silicon-iron alloy electrodes
submerged in the Pacific Ocean at Will Rogers State Beach[4] suspended in
concrete enclosures about one meter above the ocean floor.

The grounding system at Celilo consists of 1,067 cast iron anodes buried in a
two-foot trench of petroleum coke, which behaves as an electrode, arranged in
a ring of 2.02 mi (3,250.87 m) circumference at Rice Flats (near Rice,
Oregon), which is 6.6 mi (10.6 km) SSE of Celilo.

~~~
gtdawg
Incredible! I've always been fascinated when driving by the Sylmar station
(many times in my life) and never knew that I was driving by connecting
infrastructure when on PCH in that area.

And even more interesting is they are replacing/replaced it!
[https://www.circlingthenews.com/terminus-of-sylmar-ground-
re...](https://www.circlingthenews.com/terminus-of-sylmar-ground-return-
system-being-replaced/)

------
raymondh
By 1969, this was already a common meme. One example from 1967 was from the
"Court Martial" episode of Star Trek:

KIRK: Yes. (Notices the piles of books everywhere) What is all this? COGLEY: I
figure we'll be spending some time together, so I moved in. KIRK: I hope I'm
not crowding you. COGLEY: What's the matter? Don't you like books? KIRK: Oh, I
like them fine, but a computer takes less space.

[http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/15.htm](http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/15.htm)

------
walrus01
If this quote is from September 1969... The movie 2001 was released in late
spring 1968. In it the astronauts are using a color tablet computer laying on
a table, no thicker than a modern iPad, to watch video.

[https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/did-
st...](https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/did-stanley-
kubrick-invent-ipad)

~~~
ashleyn
Those working in the industry often know what's coming. What they often get
wrong is how it's economically deployed, when it arrives, or what effects it
will have.

~~~
vidarh
E.g. the first articles on capacitive touch screens dates to the 50's, and the
"flat-panel" Aiken tube display dates to the early 50's as well:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiken_tube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiken_tube)

Article on the Aiken tube from 1958 with pictures that predicts future models
may be flat enough to "hang like picture frames":

[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r98DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA104&re...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r98DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA104&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Seing the potential of going from normal TVs to that, it's certainly not a big
leap to assume they'll get even thinner and smaller.

------
tokai
I always have to mention Paul Otlet, when the topic of early predictions of
technology comes up. Too bad he was all but forgotten.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyfZkVgasI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyfZkVgasI)

[http://www.doi-toshin.com/paul-otlet-s-vision-
documentation-...](http://www.doi-toshin.com/paul-otlet-s-vision-
documentation-global-information-network-envisaged-100-years-ago-helped-shape-
modern-internet/)

~~~
noobiemcfoob
You should add more context to your comment

------
squarefoot
And here's Isaac Asimov predicting a few things about the (best part of the)
Internet of today in years when most people in the world had not even heard of
it yet.

[https://www.wimp.com/isaac-asimov-predicted-the-internet-
of-...](https://www.wimp.com/isaac-asimov-predicted-the-internet-of-
today-20-years-ago/)

(the interview is from 1988, so it's now dated over 30 years)

I believe there are much older references to a worldwide library accessible by
anyone from home in his writings, but I can't recall where. I admit having
been a huge fan of his teaching about science (I was reading a book by him
when the muted TV showed the news about his death) and I also loved his short
stories, even those not related to scientific information or science fiction,
but never liked his bigger novels, the Foundation that I quit after not even
finishing one book etc. so my knowledge is very limited in that context.

~~~
Drdrdrq
In similar vein HG2G [0] has always reminded me of Internet + (proprietary)
Wikipedia, and it's from 1978.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)

------
wp381640
Bell had a video telephone demo at the 1964 Worlds Fair in NY[0] some five
years prior to this NYTimes story

I think a lot of public ideas of the future sprung out from that

I don't think the quote refers to a _portable_ telephone but rather of the
style that was demonstrated at the World Fair

[0] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/long-before-
facet...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/long-before-facetime-or-
skype-there-was-the-picturephone)

------
Finnucane
The idea of a telephone with a screen wasn't really new in 1969, since Ma Bell
had been promoting the idea for decades. The Jetsons made fun of it on TV in
the early 60s.

------
goto11
It is fascinating what people did predict and what they didn't predict.
Smartphones, smartwatches, e-books, face-time calls was all predicted. What
people didn't predict: Clickbait, e-mail phishing, viral fake news and people
preferring SMS to a voice or facetime call.

~~~
eitland
> What people didn't predict: Clickbait, e-mail phishing, viral fake news

Didn't need to predict those. Analog equivalents always existed.

> and people preferring SMS to a voice or facetime call.

Who wouldn't ;-) Thanks to the transition to asynchronous message based
communication I can have more and more meaningful communication with a larger
part of my family than I would if I had to FaceTime or call them.

In business it is even more useful as it provides a trail of who did what in
addition to the other advantages.

~~~
cptvideo
Here’s something else that they didn’t predict: that sales of books printed on
paper are at their all-time highest now.

------
cfmcdonald
This is an odd quote to latch onto as an example of profound foresight.

Predicting a telephone with a screen in 1969 required no great skill at
prophecy, since the AT&T picture phone debuted at the 1964 World's Fair.
Really the idea of being able to remotely dial up information and services on
some kind of telephone/computer console with a screen was all over the place
by 1969. There were, after all, commercial time-sharing computer services.

I don't see any evidence that the quote refers to cell phones, since it
doesn't mention portability. But even if it did, to predict that in 1969 was
likewise not so impressive, since mobile radio-telephone service had existed
since the 1940s, and the cellular concept for frequency re-use was conceived
in the same era.

------
ficklepickle
I must mention my favourite sci-fi short story, "The Machine Stops" by E.M.
Forster[0]. It is from 1909 and is chillingly prescient.

Essentially, a machine provides all necessities of life in a persons' pod, so
they need never leave. People spend their time making essentially YouTube
videos about their opinions. Nobody cares about facts or knowledge anymore.
Spoiler, it doesn't end well for them.

[0]
[http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html)

~~~
JohnHammersley
Thanks for sharing this -- I happened upon this HN thread at just after
midnight, and decided to read the story before going to bed. It's amazing,
giving when it was written, and finding it like this reminded me about how I
used to find things on the internet (having just read through the Ask HN
comments[1] on what t'internet used to be like :) )

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18897109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18897109)

------
raldi
He perhaps had read the novelization of _2001_ , published a year earlier:

\--begin quote--

There was plenty to occupy his time, even if he did nothing but sit and read.
When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his
foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the latest
reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world's major
electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and
had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the
display unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he
quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him.

Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-
sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could
read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the
complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind
it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he was,
far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet
in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased.
(That very word "newspaper," of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the
age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if
one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing
nothing but absorbing the everchanging flow of information from the news
satellites.

It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more
convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be
replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to
Caxton or Gutenberg.

There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic headlines
often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more
trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes,
natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials - these
still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed
into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing;
the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.

------
mitchtbaum
“The best way to predict the future is to to create it.”

[https://i.giphy.com/media/l3vR6aasfs0Ae3qdG/giphy.webp](https://i.giphy.com/media/l3vR6aasfs0Ae3qdG/giphy.webp)

------
ryanmercer
What I find funny is that, even by the time we got to Star Trek TNG, people
still couldn't fathom having a device with _multiple_ books. Each reader on
TNG and DS9 appears to be a single title that you have to loan/share with
people instead of them just pulling the title from the cloud to their own
device BUT they're like "oh yeah, we can totally replicate matter and teleport
people"...

------
phaser
remimds me of francis ford coppola predicting youtube
[https://youtu.be/iSePbQVR284](https://youtu.be/iSePbQVR284)

------
kareemm
One of the heuristics I use when evaluating whether to build a new product is
to answer the question: “will people be solving this problem the way they
currently are in 5 years?” If the answer is no, that means there may be an
opportunity.

Bass was remarkable prescient, but also recognized the inevitable macro forces
that would create change in his business.

------
tzm
In 2008, I submitted a talk titled, "What if you could ask a book a
question?", where I planned to show how it's technically possible to create a
query layer around (seemingly) unstructured content. The idea was chaffed as
silly by organizers.

------
dvh
[https://www.google.com/search?q=En+lan+2000&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=En+lan+2000&tbm=isch)

------
jplayer01
> Newspad evidence was subsequently ruled out by the judge

I'm curious about this. What was wrong with the Newspad evidence? Seems
convincing and relevant enough to me.

------
rubyfan
The rest of the quote is admirably tenacious...

> What then? he was asked. “Then I go into the antiques business — books will
> be antiques,” Mr. Bass said.

~~~
lincolnq
And if you visit The Strand in NYC (on Broadway and 12th) the top floor is
indeed an antique shop. First editions, rare books and the like. It’s a
special place to hang out.

------
dzhiurgis
How long until AirPods(or its case) have eSIM?

