In a March 1977 article in Computer magazine Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg lay out their ideas for what will eventually become the laptop computer. Though the mass market production and sale of laptops wouldn’t happen for about another twenty years, they describe the dynamic interface between user and computer that, up to that point in time, did not exist. Having lived through most of the history of the computer and its development, I can bear witness to what Kay and Goldberg were up to, the reigning paradigms for computer usage that they were battling in the seventies, and how it took IBM and Apple to break out of the computing rut and put computers and useful software into the hands of users. In fact, thirty-five years later, their article, though revolutionary in its thinking, seems rather quaint. Although they were correct in suggesting that the interface between user and hardware had to be instantaneous and dynamic in the sense that users could input all sorts of data and get results back continuous in real time. Software needed to be flexible in real-time in order to make the computing experience both viable and creative. In 1977 computing was still limited to time shares, main frames, writing input, downloading input, compiling, and reading results. This is horribly time consuming and not particularly useful if you want to write a document or play a game. Perhaps computing pi to the millionth decimal place might be an interesting intellectual challenge, but it doesn’t go beyond that. It’s like a magic trick where the magician pulls a rabbit out of hat: neat spectacle but it ends there. Kay and Goldberg proposed a system where users could draw, write and design in real-time and then save and print out their results. The actual computer could no longer be the size of an aircraft carrier, and everyone, including children, would have easy access. Computers would no longer be the domain of mystical and obscure computer geniuses, but the dynamic interface would have to work. The implications for artists, writers, designers and engineers are limitless. Of course, the technology, the miniaturization of the components, had not yet occurred to build a fabulous laptop, but once the idea was on the drawing board, the market drove the investigation and development. Today, Apple Corporation is the largest company in the world with estimated assets at over 500 billion dollars, and I have a feeling that they will just continue to grow. What we saw people do with computing tablets on Star Trek is now a reality and is changing our world in ways which are still unimagined.