Robert Heinlein wrote "The Door into Summer" in 1956. In this story, sort of as an afterthought, the hero uses advanced vaccuum tube circuits to "record" the actions a mobile robot workstation would have to use, to load a dishwasher, mop a floor, and dust a living room. Then he copies the ciruit into a new vaccuum tube and plugs it into a different robot, who now "remembers" how to do all those chores. This enables the inventor to create a marketable household service robot.
With PC on a stick we may be able to duplicate this technology. It may become practicable for the home and small-scale fabricator to build a computer to match his personal inventory of machines, drills, welders and printers so he can have the efficiencies of automation in his workshop. It's been done in heavy factories for 30 years but only they have been able to afford to custom-build computers and proprietary softwares necessary.
Now it could be done with an augmented USB flashdrive and Linux. And just as robot automation benefited the Asian Tigers more than existing industrial economies in the 1980s, this new wave will be a bigger deal for the 3rd world.
When somebody tried to patent the waterbed, they were denied because Heinlein described the idea so completely in his novels that the applicant couldn't prove they added anything to his ideas. They were just copying it. The tech Heinlein described was legally "open source".
The core joke of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is that of course no civilization would develop personal computers with instant remote database recovery, and then waste this technology to find good drinks.
Steve Jobs has ruined this joke.