Dr. Sandy Miller, one of the first ACSA-PARC Interns from 1998, recently shared some reflections with me. Click here for the entire document. Highlights of some of the technologies they saw include:- Mega-pixel color computer screens. (The kind we all have now.)
- Book readers (Like the Kindle ebook reader). These were still connected by a long cord to a computer, since they didn’t have the technology yet to run it as a stand-alone.
- Hyperbolic trees and computer screens icons would explode as users” moused” over them. (Much as the dock in Apple’s does today, as well as other application.)
- “Electronic whiteboards” (Very expensive then!) and Zombie cameras that captured information and converted it to digital formats.
- Prototype of “Baby crys a lot” which would be used in schools to teach students in family life classes the challenges of caring for an infant.
Most interesting, and probably still the most relevant, is Dr. Miller's conclusion about the experience:
I think we all understood that technology is a social interaction, and
personal contact goes a long way toward helping others make changes. We
saw that technology had many opportunities, but PEOPLE were still the key.
Devin Vodicka, Ed.D.
Posts
