In 1987, then-CEO of Apple Computer, John Sculley, unveiled a vision that he hoped would cement his legacy as more than just a former purveyor of soft drinks. Keynoting at the EDUCOM conference, he presented a 5-minute, 45-second video of a product that built upon some ideas he had presented in his autobiography the previous year. (They were hugely informed by computer scientist Alan Kay, who then worked at Apple.) Sculley called it the Knowledge Navigator.
The video is a two-hander playlet. The main character is a snooty UC Berkeley university professor. The other is a bot, living inside what we’d now call a
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