From this article, I learned about the Dynabook, a personal dynamic medium created by the Learning Research Group at Xerox PARC. The Dynabook was intended to input and output information much like a human’s sensory system and the goal of the research group was to examine how each individual could manipulate the Dynabook according to their own needs/wishes. The article, therefore, offers a variety of examples of simulations that different users created.
While the ideas of this article are nothing special nowadays, they were quite revolutionary in the 1970s. I often forget to realize how far technology has come in the past few decades. Because of this, I thought this article was a very interesting read since it allowed me to see how the personal computer started off. Additionally, I enjoyed reading the various simulations created by a variety of uses. I was especially amazed at how children were able to program the machine. Finally, the most useful part of the article for me was the conclusion which contained a lot of important implications. Goldberg and Kay discussed several different ways that the Dynabook could be used by different professionals and I am sure that today, many of them have used their personal computers/laptops for these specific purposes and much more.
I look at the device as being similar to the iPad. It is like having a small personal computer in your hands, which would be really great if it was on the market. Who wouldn’t want a travel sized computer to have with them at all times? Sure now a days we have the iPad, and smartphones, but they still do not possess everything a computer can handle. This would really help people out to have. The future looks even more promising to know this is in the works. It’s awesome to look back and realized how much technology has evolved over time.
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