Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)

Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by rusk on Sunday January 25, 2026 @07:11AM (#46753414)

In Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 a space odyssey, in the book, he describes a flat handheld device that is used for reading the New York Times. He can’t remember the exact details but the ergonomics he describes perfectly encapsulate the tablet devices we have today. I’m pretty certain he wrote it before the 1969 moon landing.

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by simonw on Sunday January 25, 2026 @07:44AM (#46753644)

The movie itself predates the moon landing - it came out in 1968.

It's astonishing to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey today and reflect on how well the production design has aged. That movie is coming up on 60 years old now!

The portrayal of AI has held up extraordinarily well too.

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by serf on Sunday January 25, 2026 @08:11AM (#46753827)

>The portrayal of AI has held up extraordinarily well too.

it's interesting to think that many of our current AIs were trained on our fiction in a weird self-fulfilling strange loop.

of course the portrayal aged well, the damn things are using the material as a mimicry source.

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by hsbauauvhabzb on Sunday January 25, 2026 @04:01PM (#46758172)

Just don’t feed it the terminator movies, or the matrix.

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by dhosek on Monday January 26, 2026 @04:51PM (#46772076)

Too late.

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by dhosek on Monday January 26, 2026 @04:52PM (#46772086)

I have an unfinished novel I started in 2013 where I wrote a scene which seemed pretty sci-fi at the time but now seems like contemporary agentic AI.

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by rotexo on Sunday January 25, 2026 @09:58AM (#46754562)

Paul Rudd’s computer (~2009?) was to me probably the most accurate prediction regarding genAI (https://youtu.be/a8K6QUPmv8Q)

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by markus_zhang on Sunday January 25, 2026 @07:32AM (#46753550)

I read the book a few months ago and was shocked by this too.

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by RubberbandSoul on Sunday January 25, 2026 @09:16AM (#46754249)

They are shown in the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDha7nj4s10

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by cubefox on Sunday January 25, 2026 @09:26AM (#46754315)

There is also a reading device with a single page in the 1961 Lem novel "Return from the Stars":

> Lem predicts the disappearance of paper books from the society. Lem even describes a reading device very much like a tablet computer that the main character Hal Bregg gets familiar with when he tries to find paper books and newspapers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_from_the_Stars

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by ThrowawayR2 on Sunday January 25, 2026 @11:53AM (#46755698)

The tablets that bridge officers were signing reports on from Star Trek TOS, which started airing in 1966, precedes that. They were boxier but clearly electronic.

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Re:Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012) by socalgal2 on Sunday January 25, 2026 @05:06PM (#46758913)

I'd be curious if someone has tracked down the first of each modern thing

Dick Tracy (1933) had a smart watch - personal communicator

Bell Labs (1938) had video calls (facetime)

The Foundation (1951) had info tablets

No idea if they are the first of each

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