Chapter 1. Getting to know App Inventor
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law of Prediction[1]
1 In the essay “Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination,” in Profiles of the Future (Gollancz, 1962).
The first handheld cell phones were large, heavy, and very expensive. Here’s Martin Cooper, a technical wizard (note the white beard). He is one of the inventors of the first cell phones—and is holding his original prototype phone. In his other hand is a modern smartphone, but more than the size and weight have improved. Mobile devices today do an incredible range of jobs, from simple things like waking you up in the morning to complicated stuff like telling you where you are on the planet and providing anyplace access to the World Wide Web. Human beings have never before carried around so much power in their pockets. Even a basic smartphone operates hundreds of times more quickly and stores tens of thousands more bytes of data than the Apollo Guidance Computer that landed men on the Moon! Most of us just accept and use this power—these things happen as if by magic. App Inventor lets you become the magician, writing the spells that transform your world.
© Fundación Príncipe de Asturias
