MEMORANDUM
To: Members And Friends
NFB R&D Committee
From: T. V. Cranmer, Chairman
Subject: KIOSKS
Date: August 28, 1994
What is this "Information Kiosk" that everybody is talking about?
Should we be worried about accessing Kiosks?
One friend, a hacker of long standing, tells me that there will be
Information Kiosks (here in after referred to as IK's) in all of
America's malls. That people will be able to touch a few active
places on a TV-like screen and get connected with the Library of
Congress, thumb (or finger) through the card file and then scroll
through the electronic pages of the books of his/her choosing.
HMMM. How long will the que of those waiting their turn be? Some
how I have trouble conjuring up the picture of me standing in line
to have a go at a research task in my city's malls.
Another of my friends, perhaps with a bit less imagination, tells
me that these IK's will be in malls, department stores and hotel
lobbies as well as airports, for the purpose of providing
information to the public. Information like what merchandise is on
display on various floors of a department store; lists of services
offered by the hotel, or flight information at the airport. All of
this sounds a bit like the big glass enclosed directories now
located in lobbies of a lot of public buildings. I haven't missed
access to these directories in the past, although I might have used
the airport monitors, had they been accessible and If I could have
found one at the time I needed it.
Does anybody in this group have first hand knowledge of what IK's
are like at this time? Anybody want to speculate (risk your
reputation) on what IK's will be like in the future?
Whether we like it or not, the IK's are coming. It seems to be our
nature to find applications for most advances in technology. We
will have IK's mainly because we can.
The early IK's are here; the new and improved models are in the
pipeline. The mature technology, the ultimate IK, will be a long
time getting here. Look for the stable IK market to arrive in a
few short Earthling generations.
And now I repeat myself: Do we need to be worried about access to
IK's?
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