Allison’s Book
Posted in Featured Projects, Latest, Thoughts, Tim Portfolio - January 19, 2010 - tim
With the impending release of something book or tablet-like from Apple (next week) I thought it would be interesting to pull the following story from the archives.
Allison’s Book was the first story in a trilogy (never completed) describing the use of new consumer electronic devices in the near future (long past now). This was written I think around 1991-92 and describes events in the distant technological wilds of 1998. Suffice to say, it’s now 2010 and we’re still not there. Keep in mind, this was written just shortly after the Apple Newton appeared and long before things like iCal (2002), the consumer Internet, browsers, the iPod, desktop / mobile synchronization, home networks, etc. were in play.
It would be pretty funny if the name I used for Allison’s Book – the iBook – did in fact turn out to be the case. Gruber likes it.
It is the year 1998.
School is starting in another week and Allison has, like the other tenth graders at her school, appeared to collect her textbooks for the year. She’s on her bike. That’s no problem because her textbooks – everything she will need for the year, including all referenced texts, workbooks, and quizzes – are given to her on a small disk that costs her about $20. She fills out the check provided by her mother, drops the disk in her small school bag over her shoulder – where it will be carried with her the entire year – and heads back home to peruse the year’s texts.
Allison’s new school disk can be read by either her desktop computer in her room, or her portable electronic book she was provided with by her school her first year there. The day is nice so she heads for the front porch swing with the portable. This machine can be held in the hand or propped in the lap much like any book. It runs on rechargeable batteries charged by the holder on her desk in her room. The iBook , as the kids so fondly refer to it, has two screens, both color and both as easy to read as the books still on the shelves in her parents house – easier in fact, because the screen adjusts its backlighting automatically for the ambient light, even in a dark room or bright sunlight.
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