This just blew my mind. Back in 1987 Apple made a video about a future computer that would have a touchscreen with a computerize assistant you could talk to. They were off in their prediction by only 18 days. Wow.


In 1987, former Apple CEO John Sculley wrote about a concept called the Knowledge Navigator. It was a far out idea that was way ahead of its time. Its time, evidently, was today. The Knowledge Navigator features a digital assistant that is almost identical to Siri, which just launched hours ago, though Siri is a disembodied voice, not a guy in a bow tie. Less bow tie is always good. Check the video and tell me it's not eerily similar.

Here's the kicker, though. Andy Baio of Waxy.org noted, "The date on the professor's calendar is September 16, and he's looking for a 2006 paper written 'about five years ago,' setting the year as 2011." September 16th, 2011. So, twenty-four years ago Apple predicted that there would be a magical, touchscreen device, that could do video calls, that would have a digital assistant you could interact with, and that would pull down data from a massive network (coughTheCloudcough)... and they were only eighteen days off? That's fucking crazy.


What kind of dark magic is at work here? Does Apple have a time machine (other than their product, Time Machine) or a crystal ball? Is that how they rule computers? Time travel? Absolutely nutso. [Waxy.org and BYTECellar]

Update: To clarify, the video is not from 1987. The video was made in the mid-90's. The 1987 date was when John Sculley wrote about Knowledge Navigator is his book Odyssey. Sorry confusion be banished!

UPDATE 2: To avoid confusion and on the advice of Andy Baio, I've swapped in an edited segment of the video. To be clear, this video was produced in 1987. The previous video was produced in the mid-90's and contained this 1987 video in it. So they're still time-traveling warlocks. Everybody got that? Okay, good. Thanks, Andy!


You can keep up with Brent Rose, the author of this post, on Google+ or Twitter.