October 04, 2012

Jobs in 1983

Here is a remarkable tape of jobs presenting to the International Design Conference in Aspen, unearthed by Marcel Brown.

Worth a listen. It is hard to remember how long ago 1983 was. Jobs speaks about science-fiction ideas such as using computers as a new communication medium; interactive street maps based on photos of every intersection; the balance of privacy and openness in politics; the concept of an online app store; digital imagery; voice recognition; management at Apple; and his strategy for Apple's next decade.

We want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you, that you can learn how to use in 20 minutes... We really want to do it with a radio link in it, so you don't need to hook up to anything and you're in communication with all these larger databases and other computers.

Remember, in 1983, PCs had no networking and no GUIs, and in his lecture, he had to explain "what is a computer program", and the nutty idea of displaying proportional fonts on computers.

Posted by David at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)