> On May 5, 2016, at 12:57 PM, Jeffrey Schwartz <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> That vaguely rings a bell.
>
> I've got a 100, 110, and 130.
> Rather impressive little devices for the time.
>
> Handwriting recognition wasn't all that, but the "Assistant" function
> was pretty smart.

I’ve played with a 2100, HWR was dead on. Even on my 130 the latest system it was pretty damned good, especially after some training. IIRC the WR built into iOS and OS X are based on the same engine.

As much as Steve Jobs hated it, it’s quite obvious it’s at least a grandparent of the iPhone, just ahead of it’s time. Hell I remember carrying my 130 around years ago (sometime THIS century :-) and having people comment on how cool it was. The Palm Pilot killed it in the market because it worked much better, both functionally and form-wise, but Palm just inexplicably took their eyes off the ball.

That said this ties in reasonably well with the subject at hand. In technology. There are events that dramatically change a technological ecosystem. Like this

<http://farhodjon.uz/blog/pictures/beforeandafteriphone.jpg>

It’s almost as if there was some sort of extinction even that wiped out all cellphones, leaving the iPhone and it’s like to fill all the suddenly open ecological niches :-)

Not quite a perfect analogy, but a useful one for tracing technology that wasn’t.

Imagine something along the lines of the razzing that the Newton got in popular culture happened to the iPhone. We could well have a wild array of different cell phone designs instead of a mass of touchscreen rectangles all with the same aspect ration in a small variety of sizes.

Extend that to, say, a world where walking technology flourished along with wheeled. Instead of a large mass of cars all pretty much the same, we have this Seussian menagerie of vehicles rolling, hopping, walking along with some controlled by wheels and pedals, others by an array of levers like construction equipment and yet others with a veritable concert organ console in the drivers seat. Steam powered, gas powered, electric powered, etc.

Technological innovation tends to coalesce around successful (or merely popular) design, at least in our experience. Perhaps another culture which favors variety or novelty over manufacturing efficiency or uniformity would support a wider variety of these odd designs. it depends on their priorities.

Not quite the same “The Anachronistic Future”, extrapolating from a point before you know about certain advances, but closer and possibly easier for us (who of course are can ONLY talk about an Anachronistic Future, because we’e not there yet!) to understand.

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs