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"What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Raisin | ||
| A small device like a hearing aid that fits inside the external part of the ear; combines an intelligent agent and wireless access to the network. |
John uses the "raisin" not just to be his helper, his intelligent agent in completing tasks on the network. He also uses it as his mentor; he relies on it for advice.
| John did not know if they had tried to decrypt his raisin. He could only hope that if they did then they would trip the raisin's self-destruct routines. |
| Technovelgy from Nanotime,
by Bart Kosko. Published by Avon Books in 1987 Additional resources -
|
The technology of hearing aids has come a long way since the versions of the 1960's that were the size of a portable cd player; see Digital Hearing Aids - the Way of the Future for more information on the receiving part of a "raisin."
John had trained his raisin using the works of John Stuart Mill. Apparently, the raisin is intelligent on its own, not just in contact with the network.
A sample quote from JS Mill:
"Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained."
An interesting analogue to this idea is the "Green Bullet" from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953.
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'It was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor...'
'... he thrust in his charging arm to replenish his store of energy.'
'...the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort.'
