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"It was [H.G. Wells'] adolescent fiction, his imaginative stories, that live forever - and yet are not acknowledged in literature classes as being great literature. So to hell with the academics!"
- Greg Bear
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| Phantoscope (phenomenoscope) | ||
| A device that provides you with a computer-operable display; can be worn or surgically implanted right on your own eyes. |
I love the details in this sort of technovelgy - not just the device, but a description of how the device is used intentionally by a user, and how others might take advantage of the device. This sounds just like what our world's friendly corporations might do.
| You could get a phantoscopic system planted directly on your retinas...You could even get telaesthetics patched into your spinal column at key vertebrae. But this was said to have its drawbacks ... it was rumored that hackers for big media companies had figured out a way to get through the defenses that were built into such systems, and run junk advertisements in your peripheral vision (or even spang in the ... middle all the time - even when your eyes were closed. Bud knew a guy like that who's somehow gotten infected with a meme that ran advertisements for roach motels, in Hindi, superimposed on the bottom right-hand corner of his visual field, twenty-four hours a day, until the guy whacked himself. |
| Technovelgy from The Diamond Age,
by Neal Stephenson. Published by Bantam Books in 1995 Additional resources -
|
Actually, there is already a real phantoscope. It was an early device for viewing motion pictures developed in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins. It was a variation on the Edison Kinetoscope. It was renamed the Vitascope, and further developed by Thomas Edison.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Diamond Age
More Ideas
and Technology by Neal Stephenson
Tech news articles related to The Diamond Age
Tech news articles related to works by Neal Stephenson
Phantoscope (phenomenoscope)-related
news articles:
- JewelEye - Innovative Body Piercing Update
| Did Frank Herbert Predict Bistable Displays Like E-Ink? |
| I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display |
| Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large |
| iPhone Air Fulfils Jobs' Promise From 2007 - A Giant Screen! |
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
'From a distance it could resolve the cosmic rays reflected from various substances.'
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
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'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
