Since I am from the era of record players, typewriters, cassettes and roll up car windows, it was fun to watch Hyperland. The first touch screen was invented back in the 1960s but who would have believed back then that most individuals of all socioeconomic backgrounds in the Western world would have their own communication devices and that most of western society would become paperless.
Interestingly the first sentence of the narration in “Hyperland” is, “This is a fantasy documentary.” Ted Nelson, who invented hypertext in about 1960, said that people thought he was insane. He tried to explain to them that writing should not be sequential.
In the film, they had fun with the personal butler idea, and today we have Alexa and Siri! I am very impressed by all the innovation and intelligence of the scientists back then. It makes me wonder what they know now about the future that the world doesn’t believe.
After watching Hyperland, and all of the various predictions that came true, one can only wonder about the storyline in H2G2. Residents of Roswell, New Mexico may not consider it to be science fiction at all.