This 1987 concept video from Apple predicts not only the iPad and all of its capabilities, but also Siri, the speech-activated personal assistant that will be ubiquitous technology in a few years given how Apple products usually work. (H/T to Andrew Sullivan for the video)

Andy Baio finds this amazing:

Based on the dates mentioned in the Knowledge Navigator video, it takes place on September 16, 2011. The date on the professor’s calendar is September 16, and he’s looking for a 2006 paper written “about five years ago,” setting the year as 2011. And this morning, at the iPhone keynote, Apple announced Siri, a natural language-based voice assistant, would be built into iOS 5 and a core part of the new iPhone 4S.

So, 24 years ago, Apple predicted a complex natural-language voice assistant built into a touchscreen Apple device, and was less than a month off.

I never had the emotional attachment to Steve Jobs as many others around the web have been describing, but I do use his products. The iPhone, Macbook laptop, and the iPod seem so ordinary now, but 24 years ago who could have predicted how they would change the world as they did? I suppose that’s the best compliment you can give a technology geek like Jobs – that what he did changed the world for the better.