VIDEO: Someone predicted the iPad but didn’t cash in on it

Will Brinson

Screen shot 2011 04 25 at 10.18.10 AM 309x184 VIDEO: Someone predicted the iPad but didnt cash in on itMany a person has heard me say that I “invented the iPod.” My theory on this is that when I was 18, I kept saying how awesome it would be to have a pile of CDs on one piece of equipment that I could carry around with me. However, it’s likely that while I was thinking this, a) I wasn’t “thinking clearly enough” to actually make money on it and b) Apple was ahead of me.

However, in the 1994 Knight-Ridder video you’ll see below, which is an actual documentary about “tablet computers,” it becomes pretty obvious that there was a wealthy news company (K-R) who could have — and, more importantly, should have — made a pile of money on the invention of tablet computers.

“We may still use computers to create information but we’ll use the tablet to interact with information,” is one of the money quotes.

Biff Tannen is quite unimpressed, and as am I: how can you know all of this about the future of tablet computing a good 10-15 years before tablet computers even become popular, and still somehow manage NOT TO INVENT THEM. Take the money that you used to produce your next boring-as-hell documentary that no one watched until the invention of what you documented, and pump it into creating this “tablet computer.”

It probably could have saved the newspaper industry. Nah, just kidding. But someone could have gotten rich.

Tablet Newspaper (1994) – [Pale of Future]

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