How Arthur C. Clarke Predicted We'd Communicate in the 21st Century

beaverdownunder quotes Paleotronic:
While researching for our magazine we sometimes find nuggets buried by time that have been forgotten by the Internet. This particular nugget was found in the May 1977 issue of Creative Computing. Science fiction author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke's predictions of the future are fascinating, both for what he got right, and what he got wrong.

Quoting Arthur C. Clarke:
[W]hat about verbal inputs? Do we really need a keyboard? I'm sure the answer is 'Yes.' We want to be able to type out messages, look at them, and edit them before transmission. We need keyboard inputs for privacy, and quietness. A reliable voice recognition system, capable of coping with accents, hangovers, ill-fitting dentures and the 'human error' that my late friend HAL, the computer from 2001, complained about, represents something many orders of magnitude more complex than a simple alpha-numeric keyboard. It would be a device with capabilities, in a limited area, at least as good as those of a human brain. Yet assuming that the curves of the last few decades can be extrapolated, this will certainly be available sometime in the next century....

Noting that he coined the phrase 'Don't commute -- communicate!' Clark adds 'We are already approaching the point when it will be feasible -- not necessarily desirable -- for those engaged in what is quaintly called 'white-collar' jobs to do perhaps 95 per cent of their work without leaving home. Of course, few of today's families could survive this, but for the moment let's confine ourselves to electronic, not social, technology.'
But he wasn't excited about the possibility of telepathy in the future. 'I find that my mental processes are so incoherent...that I should be very sorry for anyone at the receiving end.'

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