[91]. In the early 1960s Clarke himself wrote in Profiles of the Future that “the first genuine thinking machines may be grown rather than constructed; already some crude but very stimulating experiments have been carried out along these lines. Several artificial organisms have been built that are capable of rewiring themselves to adapt to changing circumstances.”
[92]. Clarke’s[Clarke’s] conjecture about the business lunch of the future appears in Profiles of the Future, Harper & Row, New York, 1962, p. 194.
[93]. The “Bureau of Poultry” description of Clarke comes from Curt Suplee’s Washington Post article of November 16, 1982. Suplee also saw Clarke in nonbureaucratic attire—the sarong.
[94]. Clarke’s prediction of a business having “only the equivalent of a telephone number” is from Profiles of the Future, p. 194.
[95]. Discussing WordStar, Clarke was careful to point out that he had “never used or even seen any other word-processing system” and had “no frame of reference,” but found “only a few small nits to pick with my version. (Release 3 of 1981, WU644275C).” Among other things he repeated a complaint I myself have against WordStar 3.0. “I do wish one could see the printed instructions actually operating on the screen text,” Clarke said, “so it wasn’t messed up by those ugly control characters. That would also have the enormous benefit of preventing the sort of boob I made for the first few weeks—not closing the print instruction, with horrid results, e.g., underlining[underlining] to the end of the manuscript!!”
[96]. Alas, Lynn tried but did not successfully make radio contact with the space shuttle.
[97]. A former Victor employee tells me that charging dealers for promotional material isn’t that uncommon a practice. I realize that some dealers may waste literature, but I still think the practice is dumb.
[98]. Kaypro has donated five machines for the project and expects to send five more. Special thanks here to David Kay and Tom Peifer, a Kaypro staffer in charge of the company’s Third World donations program.
[99]. The salesman joke is from InfoWorld, October 22, 1984, p. 27.
[100]. InfoWorld, June 20, 1983, p. 1, reported the shooting incident.