Baldur Bjarnason

... works as a web developer in Hveragerði, Iceland, and writes about the web, digital publishing, and web/product development

These are his notes

Eight years ago Ted Nelson demonstrated his usual foresight in deconstructing modern computing

Parts of it are intentionally silly. Many other parts are just true.

The safest prediction anywhere is usually “more of the same”. For tomorrow’s computer world, I safely predict more of the same, but much more so– louder and more intrusive, with more interruptions, more security threats, more monopolies with more cattle-pens for users, and of course lousier interfaces.

The World Wide Web will get even more chaotic, with new forms of annoyance, temptation and danger. Meanwhile, as the HTML internals worsen, each of the competing browsers will continue to be wrong in its own way.

[…]

There will be more and more software settings nobody can get right, and the phone support people in Hyderabad who talk you through the menus will be taught new slang to make your hours with them seem more comfortable

Warning, the original is a PDF.

“Computer Tomorrow, The Unknown”