Infosystem ’95
From 10 to 13 April 1995, the international Infosystem, Multimedia and Printing Industry fair was held in Poznań. Just past the security guards, charming young women came up and pressed promotional bags into visitors’ hands.
What else was there to see besides the young women?
I personally liked a monitor bearing the words “Touch me.” It had a touch-sensitive screen. Pointing at an icon or another object with your finger took the place of a mouse click. This is especially useful for automated customer service, for example in banks, where someone needs to explain the rules for repaying a loan and so on. It should be noted that this offers plenty of scope for programmers, who have to write software that communicates with people who have had no contact with computers. This fits with the current trend towards making the user interface as simple as possible.
“Virtual reality” was very popular. It consisted of goggles with LCD screens, connected through a computer to something like a joystick (just a stick that reacted when tilted away from vertical). A DOOM-type game was used to demonstrate the equipment. Not a particularly serious application, but this is precisely how this computer novelty will enter the Polish market: ordinary players will get to experience modern equipment, which is usually used with graphics workstations for modelling.
Another curiosity was a “mind activator”: a box the size of a Walkman with a minicomputer inside. Goggles fitted with LEDs and stereo headphones were connected to it. After switching on the activator, you had to get into a suitable resting position and choose one of twenty relaxation programs. The LEDs began flashing in specific patterns, while pleasant sounds, rather like the noise of the sea, came through the headphones. After a while, we stopped seeing the light from the LEDs and receiving stimuli from the outside world, and relaxed. The device works on the subconscious.
The Polish fan club for Tangerine Dream, called TANGRAM, also had a stand at the fair. Fans of electronic music will already know what that is about. Visitors could join the fan club and buy cassettes and records of electronic music. A CD-ROM was also on display, featuring multimedia versions of the best music videos from “Muzyczna Jedynka.” It contained both the clips’ soundtracks and the videos themselves. To save space on the disc, the image had been greatly reduced and was shown at a lower frame rate than on television, so it was not smooth.
Although the fair focused on computers and the printing industry, Polish media also made their presence felt. Radio RMF FM had its own stand, as did CANAL PLUS (incidentally, the picture on their televisions was poor. If that’s how they always broadcast, then thanks, but no thanks to encrypted TV), Gazeta Wyborcza and other well-known publishers on the Polish market.
Fairs like this are a good example of how computers are slowly beginning to rule our lives. The time will come (or has it already?) when we won’t be able to do without these wonderful machines...
Fair visited by Maniu
Share your thoughts about the article