Actually, Bowerbird, if you count used PDAs, the $50 computer is already a reality as I've pointed out before. I won't claim a Bowerbird level of infallibility, far from it, but consider this little prediction that I published in Computerworld in 1992--about hardware in 2020: --Storage of at least a gigabyte of data --"A thin, lightweight, detachable screen that contains the CPU and memory chips, which are the true guts of the computer." --The ability to add on a keyboard. --Data speeds of 1M bit --"Millions of choices from books, newspapers, magazines and professional journals." http://www.teleread.com/computerworld.htm Post iPad, my prediction seems if anything on the conservative side. Darn. I should have used more "hype." I remember some people at the time saying that database searching couldn't accommodate the national digital library system I had in mind. Well, we don't have TeleRead yet. But we certainly have Google, and maybe TeleRead will happen eventually. Meanwhile I'd suggest that you and your pals repair your own crystal balls, given the rise of the standard ePub format for e-books. For newbies: Why does Bowerbird's silliness go on, year after year? Well, he wanted my TeleRead site to promote his own technology, and he hated talk from Jon Noring and me of an industry standard. Our OpenReader initiative led the main e-book industry trade group to get serious about consumer-level standards--endlessly enraging the Bird. Wacky emails like his most recent one are his revenge. If you love eBabel, all those clashing e-book formats, the Bird's your guy. Proprietary DRM still mucks up e-books in various formats, including ePub from large publishers--"protection" sucks. But at least with ePub we're part of the way there. Bowerbird's "observer" friend has probably sold thousands of dollars of books in the very format that was to fade away. Gasp, PG offers ePub among other formats, and Apple has turned thousands of Gutenberg classics into ePub books for the iPad. Don't you love the Bowerbird crowd's powers of prophesy? OK, enough time spent on the Bird for the moment. He'll very possibly be amusing us on schedule in another six months or so. Cuckoo clock... Cuckoo Bird... Bowerbird... it all blurs together. David Rothman Founder and former editor-publisher of TeleRead =========== On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 5:18 PM, <Bowerbird@aol.com> wrote:

4.5 years ago, i made a little bet with david rothman -- who i pleasantly refer to as "the idiot", inspired by a label given by another observer on the e-book scene -- about my 5-year perspective on e-book hardware...

you can find the original thread here:

...

http://www.teleread.com/2005/11/29/you-can-buy-the-mit-100-laptop-for-200/

as usual, for him, the idiot was blathering on about how there'd be $50 e-book hardware "real soon now", a line he'd been huckstering for years prior to that...

i always reminded him that an e-book reader-machine would have to have a chip and a screen, and that meant that it would essentially be a computer, and that those were the most expensive parts of any computer, so that it was totally unrealistic to expect that kind of pricing...

i said:

...

and if there’s a $50 computer — i mean a real computer – available on _any_ thanksgiving in the next 5 years, i will _buy_it_ for you. because the cost of _lunch_ will hit $50 before there is a $50 computer. and i can buy you lunch…

4.5 years later, there's still no $50 computer on the market. so it looks like the idiot's crystal ball was severely cracked...

but walmart _will_ be selling the iphone (a real computer) for just 99 bucks. so my crystal ball? pretty darn accurate.

-bowerbird

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