Information And Mobility
During a single month a few years ago, one newsweekly referred to the U.S. as "the Information Society," and another called it "the Mobile Society" - and that gave Al Becker an idea. The 41-year-old Becker is an inventor who, since dropping out of MIT in the late 1960s, has started three firms specializing in computer-related products. After selling the second company in 1986, he began looking around for a new invention. Seeing the two newsweeklies together, he realized that the needs for information and mobility called for an easily portable, private computer screen - "an ultraminiature virtual display." According to Becker, engineers had been talking for years about a device like this, but the technology being developed wasn't going to be ready until the mid-1990s. Becker describes himself as "somebody who came in from left field who figured out how to do it," using already available...