Gene Roddenberry’s popular TV concept STAR TREK not only has been credited with the idea behind today’s cell phone. It now is being credited with being the inspiration behind Apple’s new iPad computer device.
Captain Kirk amazed young viewers decades ago with his flip-open communicator, a style of mobile telephone that was adopted 30 years later by the cell phone industry. Years later, the show STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION created a small personal computing device that had a touch-screen interface, called Personal Access Display Devices or PADDs on the show.
Doug Drexler of TNG says the Apple iPad is “eerily similar” to the PADDS used in the show (see the photo above).
“It’s uncanny to have a PADD that really works!” he said.
Of course, this is another proof of MOVIEGUIDE®’s contention that the mass media of entertainment is what creates the culture in which we live.
– Source: Chris Foresman, Ars Technica, 08/10/10.
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