Roger Fidler "predicted" the iPad 16 years ago and his "block of wood" has now become a reality
My personal journey to the iPad began around 16 years ago in Aspen,
Colorado, writes Alan R. in the Guardian today. Rumours of what the Internet was capable of doing to the
news business had reached London, and the only way of checking them
out was to fly to America and find out.
I jetted off to Chigaco (sic) with Tony Ageh, now the BBC's director of
archival content, then a leading member of what the Guardian termed
the "play pen" – a roomful of twentysomethings in the basement who
were paid to dream up bright ideas (they invented the Guide).
In the art deco cathedral home of the Chicago Tribune we watched in
awe as a journalist summoned up rudimentary pictures and text on a
flickering screen. At the time there were about 20 American newspapers
online. Some (including the Boston Globe) had decided on an open
internet route – available to everyone via early browsers like
Netscape or Mosaic. The Tribune had gone down the proprietary route,
forming a partnership with America Online (now AOL). You paid a
subscription (around $9, or £6, a month plus $3.50 per hour for
additional usage), in return for which the Tribune sent you a CD in a
box to boot it up. They had 29,000 subscribers.
I wrote an excited memo back to London: "The service can deliver black
and white pictures, but they take about two minutes to download and
are pretty poor quality."
But the real excitement lay in [NOT Aspen - strike that!] Boulder, where the Knight Ridder
newspaper chain had set up a "laboratory" to study the future of news.
It was rumoured that they had built a "tablet" – a portable screen on
which people could read newspapers. This was such an intoxicating idea
that Tony and I made a detour on the way to see the San Jose Mercury.
Slightly sleepless, we arrived in Boulder, in the foothills of the Rockies, to find
a team of a dozen or so working on the future under the leadership of
a man called Roger Fidler. This is an extract of the memo I filed back
to London: "At present it consists only of an A4 block of wood, with a
'front page' stuck on it: the technology for creating Fidler's 'Flat
Pad' is, he estimates, still a couple of years off.
"Fidler believes that the traditional horizontal computer screen is
alien to non-computer readers, so his screen is vertical. He believes
that it is impossible to convert a mass newspaper-reading public to an
electronic version until you can produce something that you can read
as easily in a bathroom or in bed as you can a paper. It must also
look like a conventional paper document rather than rely on computer
conventions…"The flatpad would be in contact with the 'host' newspaper by means of
two-way wireless. You would programme your own flatpad to update you
with whatever information you wanted as often as you wanted it,
whether it be certain stock prices, weather, political news or golf
scores. In addition, you can ask it to give you only the ads you are
interested in.
"The Knight Ridder lab is working on the software for the flatpad… You
can ask the current versions to read stories or information to you
(handy if driving). It will do so in your voice, or in the voice of
Walter Cronkite, Anna Ford, James Naughtie or Elizabeth Hurley. It
offers moving graphics, video footage of news events and sports. An
asterisk in the text indicates that there is visual back-up. You can
interrupt an account of a World Cup match to see the penalty shoot-out
the writer is describing."
All this over a block of wood! My memo went on to quote Fidler's
colleague, Peggy Bair: "We're working on the technology of the panel:
things like size, battery life, screen resolution and two-way wireless
communications. We think it may be achievable around the beginning of
1996. We accept it may be 20 years before as many people subscribe to
an electronic news service as they do to other forms. Already, 60% of
newspaper costs are in manufacture and delivery."
Fidler's dream never quite got airborne before the hurricane blowing
through the American newspaper industry killed off the Knight Ridder
lab and all its hopes.
But I remembered Fidler and his dream on Tuesday when the courier from
New York finally pitched up and, with slightly trembling fingers, I
pulled my sleek new iPad out of its nest of polystyrene chips. Here it
was – the Aspen block of wood incarnate!
NOTE: Roger Fidler was a journalist and newspaper designer for 34 years and has been on the leading edge of online and digital publishing development since the late 1970s. As program director for digital publishing at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI), he coordinates digital publishing research projects and the Digital Publishing Alliance (DPA). He has been at RJI since 2004, when he was named as the first RJI Fellow. Before that he was a tenured professor of journalism in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent State University.
Before joining the Kent State faculty in 1996, Fidler served as Director of New Media for Knight-Ridder, Inc., and headed the company’s Information Design Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado (1992-1995). He founded and headed two successful companies and was a member of Knight-Ridder’s videotex development team. He served as the first director of design for the company’s pioneering consumer online service, Viewtron (1979-1983).
Fidler first conceived and wrote about digital publications and portable electronic reading devices in 1981. Ten years later, he created the first prototype while he was a Freedom Forum Media Studies Fellow at Columbia University. In 2001, he developed a model for digital editions that would take full advantage of Adobe’s Acrobat software and emerging tablet PCs. At RJI, he has continued to develop the Electronic Media Print (eMprint) model and has field tested it through the Missourian eMprint experiment. He now works with DPA members to develop eMprint newsbooks for reading on eReaders, notebook computers and other mobile devices.
Fidler attended the University of Oregon (1962-66) and earned a master’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Kent State University in 1999. In 2004, he was inducted into the University of Oregon School of Journalism’s Hall of Achievement.
Colorado, writes Alan R. in the Guardian today. Rumours of what the Internet was capable of doing to the
news business had reached London, and the only way of checking them
out was to fly to America and find out.
I jetted off to Chigaco (sic) with Tony Ageh, now the BBC's director of
archival content, then a leading member of what the Guardian termed
the "play pen" – a roomful of twentysomethings in the basement who
were paid to dream up bright ideas (they invented the Guide).
In the art deco cathedral home of the Chicago Tribune we watched in
awe as a journalist summoned up rudimentary pictures and text on a
flickering screen. At the time there were about 20 American newspapers
online. Some (including the Boston Globe) had decided on an open
internet route – available to everyone via early browsers like
Netscape or Mosaic. The Tribune had gone down the proprietary route,
forming a partnership with America Online (now AOL). You paid a
subscription (around $9, or £6, a month plus $3.50 per hour for
additional usage), in return for which the Tribune sent you a CD in a
box to boot it up. They had 29,000 subscribers.
I wrote an excited memo back to London: "The service can deliver black
and white pictures, but they take about two minutes to download and
are pretty poor quality."
But the real excitement lay in [NOT Aspen - strike that!] Boulder, where the Knight Ridder
newspaper chain had set up a "laboratory" to study the future of news.
It was rumoured that they had built a "tablet" – a portable screen on
which people could read newspapers. This was such an intoxicating idea
that Tony and I made a detour on the way to see the San Jose Mercury.
Slightly sleepless, we arrived in Boulder, in the foothills of the Rockies, to find
a team of a dozen or so working on the future under the leadership of
a man called Roger Fidler. This is an extract of the memo I filed back
to London: "At present it consists only of an A4 block of wood, with a
'front page' stuck on it: the technology for creating Fidler's 'Flat
Pad' is, he estimates, still a couple of years off.
"Fidler believes that the traditional horizontal computer screen is
alien to non-computer readers, so his screen is vertical. He believes
that it is impossible to convert a mass newspaper-reading public to an
electronic version until you can produce something that you can read
as easily in a bathroom or in bed as you can a paper. It must also
look like a conventional paper document rather than rely on computer
conventions…"The flatpad would be in contact with the 'host' newspaper by means of
two-way wireless. You would programme your own flatpad to update you
with whatever information you wanted as often as you wanted it,
whether it be certain stock prices, weather, political news or golf
scores. In addition, you can ask it to give you only the ads you are
interested in.
"The Knight Ridder lab is working on the software for the flatpad… You
can ask the current versions to read stories or information to you
(handy if driving). It will do so in your voice, or in the voice of
Walter Cronkite, Anna Ford, James Naughtie or Elizabeth Hurley. It
offers moving graphics, video footage of news events and sports. An
asterisk in the text indicates that there is visual back-up. You can
interrupt an account of a World Cup match to see the penalty shoot-out
the writer is describing."
All this over a block of wood! My memo went on to quote Fidler's
colleague, Peggy Bair: "We're working on the technology of the panel:
things like size, battery life, screen resolution and two-way wireless
communications. We think it may be achievable around the beginning of
1996. We accept it may be 20 years before as many people subscribe to
an electronic news service as they do to other forms. Already, 60% of
newspaper costs are in manufacture and delivery."
Fidler's dream never quite got airborne before the hurricane blowing
through the American newspaper industry killed off the Knight Ridder
lab and all its hopes.
But I remembered Fidler and his dream on Tuesday when the courier from
New York finally pitched up and, with slightly trembling fingers, I
pulled my sleek new iPad out of its nest of polystyrene chips. Here it
was – the Aspen block of wood incarnate!
NOTE: Roger Fidler was a journalist and newspaper designer for 34 years and has been on the leading edge of online and digital publishing development since the late 1970s. As program director for digital publishing at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI), he coordinates digital publishing research projects and the Digital Publishing Alliance (DPA). He has been at RJI since 2004, when he was named as the first RJI Fellow. Before that he was a tenured professor of journalism in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent State University.
Before joining the Kent State faculty in 1996, Fidler served as Director of New Media for Knight-Ridder, Inc., and headed the company’s Information Design Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado (1992-1995). He founded and headed two successful companies and was a member of Knight-Ridder’s videotex development team. He served as the first director of design for the company’s pioneering consumer online service, Viewtron (1979-1983).
Fidler first conceived and wrote about digital publications and portable electronic reading devices in 1981. Ten years later, he created the first prototype while he was a Freedom Forum Media Studies Fellow at Columbia University. In 2001, he developed a model for digital editions that would take full advantage of Adobe’s Acrobat software and emerging tablet PCs. At RJI, he has continued to develop the Electronic Media Print (eMprint) model and has field tested it through the Missourian eMprint experiment. He now works with DPA members to develop eMprint newsbooks for reading on eReaders, notebook computers and other mobile devices.
Fidler attended the University of Oregon (1962-66) and earned a master’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Kent State University in 1999. In 2004, he was inducted into the University of Oregon School of Journalism’s Hall of Achievement.
posted by dan at 5:45 AM
2 Comments:
Actually, the lab was in Boulder, not Aspen.
Dear Anon, yes, thanks for that correction, will correct soon. Someone also corrected that note on the original Guardian piece, the UK writer said it was Aspen, I am sure meant Boulder, but Aspen came out and it's still written as ASPEN on the Guardian website. I sent in a note for a correction but I don't think they CARE to be honest. You know those Brits, they don't care about the rest of the world, just jolly old Englande. That's their problem, I guess. But will correct it here. Thanks. also notice the writer, Alan R, he is the editor of the Guardian, even, he spells Chicago as Chigaco. I wrote to him personally and he replied OUT OF OFFICE GO FUCK YOURSELF ZIPPY1300. KIDDING. But I did write to him. Maybe he will correct it next month. Can't tell with the Brits. They hate to be corrected, especially the Guardian people. I have no idea why they are so uppity. Hope you're not a Brit, Anon, if you are, my apologies, just kidding hehe. you are not the same bloke you corrected the Guardain on their comemnts page are you? GOod on ya mate!
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