Hardware Trends

We won’t describe all of the features proposed for TABLET, since the technology itself is not our focus. Suffice it to say, and we emphasize this point, nothing needs to be invented in order for a first version of TABLET to appear (or PENCIL, PORTFOLIO, DIGIT-VISION, VOID-DIAGRAMMING, and ConferSPACE, which are described later in the paper). All of the technology currently exists, making our predictions exceedingly conservative. Our predictions have been developed by realizing that changes over time are more important than the specific limitations of any single piece of computer technology. In particular we have looked at the rate of change in computer operating speed and capacity, increasing screen resolution, decreasing size and weight of all components, merging of computer and video technologies, and improving communication capabilities, and found the trends in all cases support our descriptions.

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