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"I've been very obsessive about writing science fiction for far too many years. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have given up years ago."
- Charles Stross
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| Universal Card | ||
| A device that mimics every credit card and identification card you possess. |
In the world of Hyperion, hundreds of worlds are open via farcaster portals - a means of instantaneous transportation between worlds. There is no need to make sense of the financial systems in place in these worlds; they all accept the Universal Card.
Note: Be sure to see the Science Fiction in the News item about the Chameleon Card.
| If our society ever opted for Orwell's Big Brother approach, the instrument of choice for oppression would have to be the credit wake. In a totally noncash economy with only a vestigial barter black market, a person's activities could be tracked in real time by monitoring the credit wake of his or her universal card. There were strict laws protecting card privacy but laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove. |
| Technovelgy from Hyperion,
by Dan Simmons. Published by Doubleday in 1989 Additional resources -
|
In this society, there is almost no off-the-books cash or barter; every transaction is recorded. Surely, this is VISA taken to the logical extreme - and thanks to farcaster technology, it really is everywhere you want to be.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Hyperion
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and Technology by Dan Simmons
Tech news articles related to Hyperion
Tech news articles related to works by Dan Simmons
Universal Card-related
news articles:
- Chameleon Card: Simmons' Universal Credit Card?
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
