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Dynabook

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Early portable computer concept This article is about the children's computer concept. For the mass-market laptop manufacturer formerly called Toshiba, see Dynabook Inc.

Dynabook
The Dynabook's original illustration in Alan C. Kay's 1972 paper
DeveloperAlan Kay
Release dateConcept 1972

The KiddiComp concept, envisioned by Alan Kay in 1968 while a PhD candidate, and later developed and described as the Dynabook in his 1972 proposal "A personal computer for children of all ages", outlines the requirements for a conceptual portable educational device that would offer similar functionality to that now supplied via a laptop computer or (in some of its other incarnations) a tablet or slate computer with the exception of the requirement for any Dynabook device offering near eternal battery life. Adults could also use a Dynabook, but the target audience was children.

Part of the motivation and funding for the Dynabook project came from the need for portable military maintenance, repair, and operations documentation. The prospect of eliminating the need to move large amounts of difficult-to-access paper in a dynamic military theater led to significant US Department of Defense funding.

Though the hardware required to create a Dynabook is here today, Alan Kay still thinks the Dynabook hasn't been invented yet, because key software and educational curricula are missing. When Microsoft came up with its tablet PC in 2001, Kay was quoted as saying "Microsoft's Tablet PC, the first Dynabook-like computer good enough to criticize".

In 1989, Toshiba released a sub-notebook computer called DynaBook, inspired by the concept. Kay was personally gifted a unit and was a guest of Toshiba. The company released notebook computers under the DynaBook brand in Japan; in 2018, Sharp acquired a majority stake in Toshiba's PC business, now named Dynabook Inc. and has marketed notebooks worldwide under the Dynabook name.

Original concept

Alan Kay holding the mockup of Dynabook, 2008

Describing the idea as "A Personal Computer For Children of All Ages", Kay wanted the Dynabook concept to embody the learning theories of Jerome Bruner and some of what Seymour Papert— who had studied with developmental psychologist Jean Piaget and who was one of the inventors of the Logo programming language — was proposing. This concept was created two years before the founding of Xerox PARC. The ideas led to the development of the Xerox Alto prototype, which was originally called "the interim Dynabook". It embodied all the elements of a graphical user interface, or GUI, as early as 1972. The software component of this research was Smalltalk, which went on to have a life of its own independent of the Dynabook concept.

The hardware on which the programming environment ran was relatively irrelevant.

At the same time, Kay tried in his 1972 article to identify existing hardware components that could be used in a Dynabook, including screens, processors and storage memory. For example:

A standalone 'smart terminal' that uses one of these chips for a processor (and includes memory, a keyboard, a display and two cassettes) is now on the market for about $6000.

The Dynabook vision was most fully laid out in Kay’s 1977 article "Personal Dynamic Media", co-authored with collaborator (and Smalltalk co-inventor) Adele Goldberg.

In 2019, Kay gave a detailed answer to a question on Quora, about the origins of the Dynabook concept.

Later works

Since the late 1990s, Kay has been working on the Squeak programming system, an open source Smalltalk-based environment which could be seen as a logical continuation of the Dynabook concept.

He was actively involved in the One Laptop Per Child project, which uses Smalltalk, Squeak, and the concepts of a computer for learning.

References

  1. ^ Kay, Alan (1972). "A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages". A standalone 'smart terminal' that uses one of these chips for a processor (and includes memory, a keyboard, a display and two cassettes) is now on the market for about $6 000
  2. Richards, Mike (January 23, 2008). "Why the iPhone makes 2008 seem like 1968 all over again". Open2. Archived from the original on November 12, 2011. Retrieved September 2, 2011.
  3. Steinberg, Daniel H. (April 3, 2003). "Daddy, Are We There Yet? A Discussion with Alan Kay". OpenP2P.com. O'Reilly. Archived from the original on November 15, 2017.
  4. Levy, Steven (April 30, 2001). "Bill Gates Says, Take This Tablet". Newsweek.
  5. "Archived computingjapan Articles". www.japaninc.com. December 18, 2006. Retrieved November 20, 2024.
  6. 東芝のＰＣ、シャープ売却後も名前は「ＴＯＳＨＩＢＡ」, 朝日新聞 (Asahi Shimbun).
  7. "Sharp to Buy Toshiba's Personal Computer Business, License Brand", Bloomberg, June 5, 2018
  8. "40th Anniversary of the Dynabook", Computer History Museum, archived from the original on November 8, 2008, retrieved November 4, 2008.
  9. ^ "The Laptop Celebrates 40 Years", Wired, November 2008.
  10. ^ Kay, Alan C.; Goldberg, Adele (March 1977). "Personal Dynamic Media". Computer. 10 (3): 31–41. doi:10.1109/c-m.1977.217672. S2CID 15070347.
  11. Kay, Alan. "Alan Kay's answer to American computer pioneer Alan Kay's concept, the Dynabook, was published in 1972. How come Steve Jobs and Apple iPad get the credit for tablet invention?". Quora. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
  12. WIRED Staff. "Alan Kay Honored". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved May 12, 2024.
  13. "Q&A: Adele Goldberg on the Legacy of Smalltalk - IEEE Spectrum". IEEE. Retrieved May 12, 2024.

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