These days, just about everyone carries around a "Personal Information Telecommunications Agent."
Or, a PITA, for short.
Which also happens to be an acronym for something that can't be written in a family-friendly newspaper.
It's the name science fiction writer David Gerrold in the late 1990s applied to his prediction for the device he saw coming — what we call the smartphone — that would combine into one the myriad of devices people used to carry around.
Gerrold's writing credits include the much-loved episode of the original Star Trek series, " The Trouble with Tribbles ."
On Twitter, technology writer Esther Schindler said that in 1999, she had asked Gerrold to write a "future of computing" prediction for a magazine where she was the technology editor at the time.
In 1999, I asked David Gerrold to write a 'future of computing' prediction for the magazine where I was Technology Editor. Here's what he wrote. pic.twitter.com/UAMM0Pm4W6
— Esther Schindler (@estherschindler) March 28, 2018
Gerrold's prediction turned out to be very, very accurate — as he foresaw cell phones, pocket organizers, beepers, calculators, digital cameras, pocket tape recorders, music players, and even televisions melding into one device.
"It will be a box less than an inch thick and smaller than a deck of cards," he wrote. "The box will have a high-res color screen, a microphone, a plug for a headset or earphones, a camera lens, wireless connectivity, cell phone and beeper functions, a television and radio receiver, a digital recorder, and it will have enough processing power and memory to function as a desktop system.
"It will be able to dock with a keyboard and full-size monitor. Oh yes, and it will handle email, as well."
And in addition to the smartphone, his prediction also foresaw the coming of devices such as Amazon's voice-activated Alexa and its competitors.
"Most important of all, it will have both speech recognition and speech synthesis. It will listen and respond in English or whatever language you need, and yes, it will be a translator, too," Gerrold wrote.
The name he applied to the device of the future conjured in his mind seems to have been in jest. But, given the love-hate relationship many have with their smart devices, it seems to apply just as much.
For, as he noted, "having all that connectivity is going to destroy what's left of everyone's privacy."
Can Gerrold do it again?
Since so many people asked what Gerrold would predict today, Schindler said she asked Gerrold for an updated, 2018 version .
Brian C. Rittmeyer is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-226-4701, brittmeyer@tribweb.com or on Twitter @BCRittmeyer.
