I keep thinking I must re-read Being Digital - because, without actually looking or doing any research I'm convinced Negroponte was right, just 20 years too soon. We, for instance, are slowly, and accidentally, building the Daily Me, It's a good idea, it's just that when everyone was excited about it it wasn't practically buildable. Now, when it's do-able, it's dismissed as futurist moonshine from the past.
I've been thinking the same about Pointcast. It was partly no good because of the bandwidth it hogged, partly because it was too advertisingy but mostly because no one had surplus screens. Screensavers are the wrong place for all this.
But we're about to enter an age of surplus pixels - screens sitting there, resting, not showing much, perhaps the odd slide show, screens that aren't the thing we're doing. In public spaces, in offices, in our homes. iPads and iPad-killers are going to be sitting around our living rooms, next to our desks, next our beds. And we'll soon want more on there than our picture libraries Ken Burnsing slowly away to themselves. But we're going to want less than most designers are inclined to design. We'll need a restful, slow, quiet sort of information/entertainment design. Stuff that's happy not to be looked at that much. That'll be interesting.
Anyway.