Tag Archives: cool uses for technology

I love living in the future.

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Consider the following quote, from The Design of Everyday Things
by Don Norman (copyright 1988):

Would you like a pocket-size device that reminded you of each appointment and daily event? I would. I am waiting for the day when portable computers become small enough that I can keep one with me at all times. I will definitely put all my reminding burdens upon it. It has to be small. It has to be convenient to use. And it has to be relatively powerful, at least by today’s standards. It has to have a full, standard typewriter keyboard and a reasonably large display. It needs good graphics, because that makes a tremendous difference in usability, and a lot of memory – a huge amount, actually. And it should be easy to hook up to the telephone; I need to connect it to my home and laboratory computers.

I bought the book and found this passage while reading the book on my couch… on the Kindle app on my iPhone.

I love living in the future.

Cause of Death: Sloppy Doctors

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Your next prescription could be on a computer somewhere, instead of on a scrawled and wrinkled sheet of paper.

I’ve been waiting a long time for this. A certain drugstore screwed up three different prescriptions on us in two weeks last summer, one of which could have been very dangerous. At least one of those was due to the fact that the pharmacy misread the prescription.

Not all of our doctors have computers, but if even one or two of them link into this, there will be less fighting with Caremark, less fighting to get scrips refilled… all in all, a very nice process.