APPLIANCES OF THE FUTURE

Even the copying machine has become a computer, or more precisely, a general purpose document device. But it still can be made simple in appearance, easy to use. It doesn't look like a computer and it shouldn't. On the outside, it looks like it always did: put something down on the glass plate, push a button, and out comes the copy. But the copy might be from an original produced half-way around the world. Or it might have been retrieved from a storage archive. In fact, it may be an original, for what does "copy" mean when the original is a computer image? The copying machine can transform the document: enhance it, modify it, send it around the world or store it. It can find the text and read it, perhaps aloud. It can translate the text, and send the translation around the world, perhaps speaking it aloud. After all, what is the differences between machines that scan, copy, manipulate, combine, compose, fax, or print in a world where everything is networked: answer, there is no difference.