A lost speech Steve Jobs gave in 1983 has surfaced, and in it he makes some eerily prophetic predictions about the tech we’re using today.
Speaking to the International Design Conference, Jobs outlined a device that would eventually become the Apple iPad: “We want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you.” And he imagined it’d be wireless: “We really want to do it with a radio link in it so you don’t have to hook up to anything and you’re in communication with all of these larger databases and other computers.” He also calls out email, mobile computing, and even an experiment by MIT that is very similar to Google Street View. Jobs didn’t come up with these ideas out of thin air, but he showed how they could impact and transform our society.
For some perspective, in 1983, the Apple II was the best-selling computer, Nintendo’s Famicom went on sale in Japan, and Michael Jackson moonwalked for the first time.
