I was reading an article on Wired magazine looking back at the intellectual successes of the now defunct company General Magic. The men who ran the company, Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, basically laid the conceptual groundwork for the Smartphone. Here’s General Magic’s original mission statement from 1990 taken from a November 1993 article on Wired:

We have a dream of improving the lives of many millions of people by means of small, intimate life support systems that people carry with them everywhere. These systems will help people to organize their lives, to communicate with other people, and to access information of all kinds. They will be simple to use, and come in a wide range of models to fit every budget, need, and taste. They will change the way people live and communicate.

I was reading this while absentmindedly looking at Continue reading »