Speculation, innovation, regulation: 40 years of covering science and technology.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald

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THE TIME IS sometime between 1973 and 1980. Our man sits clown to his telephone. It is a deluxe model, with a television screen, television camera, teletype outlet, electronic writing pad, copier, and, yes, a handset. He flips on the machine and speaks towards the television screen (there is a mike and speaker next to it). He identifies himself and asks for his "mail." The computer checks his voiceprint and visual identity, and then displays the return address of the first "letter" on the screen, at the same time announcing it over the audio.

"No audio, please," he demands of the computer. "And skip this letter for now. Do you have the one from Betty?"

"Yes," the computer flashes, and displays a short hand written note. He reads it and asks the computer to file it electronically under both her name and the date. The display fades and is replaced by a diagram sent by one of his engineers. He instructs the comp. to file it under name, date, and 3 cross-referencial subject headings after making a copy for himself. He finishes the rest of his mail, answering as he goes along, with the comp. automatically entering a "carbon" of each letter he writes into his file. Most letters he dictates to the comp. Some he types, and the note to Betty, he writes with the light pen.

Those visionary paragraphs appeared in the mimeographed September 1968 edition of reason. The date was a little optimistic and some of the details were off, but founding editor Lanny Friedlander basically described the world we live in today. Using computers, we communicate via electronic mail, viewing the messages on video monitors, and--in some cases--have them announced ("You've got mail!"). We can dictate emails and memos using voice input software such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking, we can write them using a stylus on tablet computers, and, of course, we can type them. We routinely save "carbons" of our emails, files, and articles. And we often take security measures to protect their privacy.

Appreciating the liberating possibilities of technology and science is deeply inscribed in reason's intellectual DNA. Though concrete predictions such as Friedlander's have been rare, the magazine has concentrated on breaking the regulatory shackles that limit scientific research and hobble technological progress. In that effort, reason supplied intellectual ammunition that helped break up government-sanctioned monopolies controlling mail and telephony. We explained how government exacerbated various energy crises and killed people by slowing medical progress. We explored the failures of industrial policy, NASA'S death grip on space travel, and federal efforts to snoop on private citizens. And early on, we identified the statist strain within the environmental movement as a danger to technological progress.

Reading back through 40 years of reason also reveals, somewhat dishearteningly, that Luddites and techno conservatives never quit, and that no advance of technological progress is ever permanently secure. And yes, we occasionally got some things wrong.

Imagining the Web

Friedlander wasn't the only reason writer to anticipate the communications and computer revolutions. In January 1977, the economist David Levy hailed the vinyl video disk as a way to break the stranglehold of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on television. "Freedom of speech entails the right to annoy people. Unregulated video disks will create the right of the producers and the purchasers of video message to annoy anyone they wish, Levy wrote. "The production of television signals will be freed from the veto power of groups acting through the political process" Though Levy's dismissal of videotape as being too expensive for home use proved less accurate, his insight that consumer access to non-broadcast video would reduce the FCC's power was right.

In October 1983's "Hanging Up on Your Phone Company," Peter Samuel noted that 15 years after AT&T had first applied for a license to build a cellular phone system, the FCC finally issued 25 permits to build networks in Chicago, New York, and other cities. "Within just a few years," he predicted, "millions of cellular-radio subscribers will be placing calls with portable telephones like the Motorola Dyna TAC hand-held unit." Described as the "world's first truly portable phone," the Dyna TAC weighed 1.8 pounds, measured 8 by 3 by 2 inches, and was good for 12 three-minute phone calls on a battery charge. By 2008, one-fifth of American adults had ditched their landlines altogether, and nearly everyone carries smaller, cheaper, and much more powerful cell phones in their pockets.

"'Telecommuting' is another phenomenon that modern telephony can make possible" Samuel noted, explaining that "with portable terminals hooked via telephone to remote computers and data bases...