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"There's a poetry in the materials we use to construct our world of artifacts; it speaks of our long history as a technological species."
- William Gibson
 |
| News Clown | ||
| A person who delivers specially selected light news. |
This is not a device, so it does not, strictly speaking, belong here. However, I'm adding it anyway.
| An hour before his morning program on channel six, ranking news clown Jim Briskin sat in his private office with his production staff, conferring on the report of an unknown possibly hostile flotilla detected at eight hundred astronomical units from the sun. It was big news, of course. But how should it be presented to his several-billion viewers scattered over three planets and seven moons?
Peggy Jones, his secretary, lit a cigarette and said. "Don't alarm them, Jim-Jam. Do it folksy-style... "Folksy-style," Jim Briskin said glumly. "I grin and say, Hey look comrades - it's happened at last, the thing we all feared, ha ha..." "Is there any lighter piece of news?" Peggy asked. "By which you could open your program? The sponsor would like that... See what you can do. Mutant cow obtains voting franchise in court case in Alabama... you know." |
| Technovelgy from Stand-By,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy in 1963 Additional resources -
|
Just in case you thought that the trend toward news as entertainment was a recent idea.
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Tech news articles related to Stand-By
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
| Switzerland May Cap Population At Ten Million |
| California Governor Candidate Calls For Voting By Phone |
| Chinese Hospital Tries Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron' Cosplay |
| A Remarkable Coincidence |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
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'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
