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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Trace Web | ||
| A small, handheld device that contacts (and even instantiates) the larger network. |
Fascinating early use of the word web for a vast, interrelated data network.
| "Here we go, sir," the robot pilot said. The words startled Rogers and made him look up sharply. He tensed his body and adjusted the trace web inside his coat as the bubble ship started dropping, swiftly and silently, toward the planet's surface...
Rogers' fingers touched the trace web. The web warmed into life. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said. |
| Technovelgy from Souvenir,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Fantastic Universe in 1954 Additional resources -
|
Based on this usage, people should start calling their phone a "web" anytime now.
Compare to the control-face from William Gibson's 1996 novel Idoru and of course to the Joymaker from Frederik Pohl's 1966 novel The Age of the Pussyfoot.
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'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
