Speaking of futuristic visions, I just have to share with you this wonderful find from John Holbo at John & Belle Have A Blog: Hugo Guernsback, namer of Science Fiction and whose namesake are the Hugo Awards, sent out an annual letter called Forecast, and many of them are archived here:
First published in 1951 Forecast was sent only to friends and associates each December. Forecast was Hugo's "Christmas Card", but in another sense, it was his dream of the future. Hugo Gernsback's insight into science and technology amazed many a scientist, among them Lee DeForest, inventor of the triode vacuum tube that set the wheels of technology into frantic motion, to where we are today!The well-married Holbo seems most taken with "Electronic Mating." Most charming to me, so far, is Gernsback's 1964 description of the Electronic Newspaper:
In the atomic age, the instant newspaper is a must, a practical necessity. I call the new method RAFAR (from Radio Automated Facsimile And Reproduction).. .The retail mass-produced price would probably come to $100 to $150 for a black and white receiver, more for the color set. But as the consumer saves from $44 to $60 a year in not buying newspapers, and as a large percentage of people by on terms, it appears that there could be dozens of millions of rafar receivers in American homes in a few years.Completely transistorized, the weight would without the screen would be less than 15 pounds including the optical projector.
Looking at that, our New Media Revolution is going at a decent pace. .
