Technoglitch
Core Member
In 1983, Apple was a company still finding its legs, and a large swath of the general public hadn't the faintest idea what a computer did, let alone actually owning one. "For context, the Macintosh hadn't even been released yet," says Casey Chan at Gizmodo. "Michael Jackson just moonwalked for the very first time and Ronald Reagan started talking about Star Wars missiles." That same year, Steve Jobs gave a small speech at an event called the International Design Conference in Aspen, and detailed Apple's eerily prescient vision for the future, hinting at plans for the iPad and Siri. Now, the entirety of the audio is available online thanks to Marcel Brown at the blog Life, Liberty, and Technology. (Listen to it below.) Here, five highlights from Jobs' spookily accurate predictions:
1. He predicted that every home would have a computer
2. He had begun imagining the iPad
3. And (sort of) referenced Google Street View
4. He was already pondering the App Store
5. And Siri, too

1. He predicted that every home would have a computer
2. He had begun imagining the iPad
3. And (sort of) referenced Google Street View
4. He was already pondering the App Store
5. And Siri, too
- Jobs stated that we will "spend more time interacting with personal computers than cars."
- Brown further explains how Jobs imagined a world where "people could be walking around anywhere and pick up their e-mail."
- Jobs tried to explain his opinions of Apple's role in distributing knowledge. He stated, "We are all bombarded with information every day," noting that much of this information would not distill "wisdom" (ahem, YouTube cat videos.) Thus, his goal was to provide tools "to distribute that intelligence" for something useful, that could be "possess-able by everyone." Given the vastness of the internet and the mobile technology we have today, his predictions are are startlingly accurate.
- Jobs recognized the difficulty of voice recognition early on. "This stuff is hard," he said toward the end of the discussion. Brown mentions that this is an interesting statement, considering the (often criticized) Siri app on iPhones today.