Chapter 11. Honey, I’ve Shrunk the PC.

And the CD Player and the TV and the Phone and the Library and the Newsstand and the Picture Gallery and the Gameboard and the Earth...

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One of my first computers was a Seequa Chameleon, a knock-off of the first Compaq. The Chameleon, which debuted in 1983 at a price of $2,000, had two 5.25" floppy drives—no hard drive—a 9” green monochrome screen, and 256 KB of RAM. It was made of strong, heavy metal. Heavy metal. I recall a Sisyphean struggle to lug and drag it the length of the St. Louis airport, all the while thinking, “If this is the future of mobile computing, I’m going to buy myself an abacus.”

I’m ...

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