Chris Espinosa Brainstorms a "People's Computer"

For a transcript of these notes, see below.

First of two pages of handwritten notes by Chris Espinosa's handwritten notes on "People's Computer: Software." The page's heading reads "Most important functions: Entry, Retrieval, Manipulation of Data."

Second of two pages of handwritten notes by Chris Espinosa's handwritten notes on "People's Computer: Software." The page's categories include "Application: Personal Computing, Information Retrieval, Education, Real World." He recalls (in e-mail to Alex Pang, 21 June 2000) that "I believe I wrote that, probably in the summer or fall of 1981, early in the development of the Macintosh. Not for anything official, but as part of the overall blue-sky thinking that we were being encouraged to do about what the Mac could be." (undated)

Transcript of Notes

People's Computer: Software

Most important functions:

• Entry
• Retrieval
• Manipulation

of data

Entry

Entry of data can be either automatic or manual; the data cane come from either the user or an external source.

• User Data: programs, text, tables, phone numbers, addresses, recipes, lists, bills....
• External data: Datacast, The Source, Yellow Phone, Wire services, DJ News Service, AppleNet

Manipulation

including Editing

• Text Editing
• Mathematical apparatus on sets, columns, or groups of numbers
• Interactive mathematical modeling (VisiCalc, DeskTop Plan)
• Graphics Editing; animation
• Sorting, Reformatting
• Merging, copying, replicating, permuting, rotating, shifting anything

Retrieval

• Keyed Relational Retrieval
• Searching, Selection
• Indexing
• Reduction, Compression

Applications

Personal Computing

Text editing, letter-writing, tax planning, checkbook, bill keeping and accounting, budget planning, file keeping, indexing collections of things, day-timer appointment keeping, calendar, logbook, personal diary, event scheduling and management, critical path management, mailing list, phone index, form letters.

Information Retrieval

News and information, stock and commodities quotes, movie listings and reviews, sports scores, weather, money markets, community information networks. Bus/airline schedules, fares.

Education

Standard educational packages, plus test scoring, student record keeping, etc.

Real World

(I'm not sure of most of these)

Device control, home lighting and control, phone answering machine (auto-answer/autodial), speech synthesis and recognition, OCR, burglar alarm, media control (TV, stereo, etc.), EFT, automatic check/bill paying;