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"I did more research, and realized I almost would rather be a biologist than a writer, because there was incredible stuff going on!"
- Greg Bear
 |
| Data Goggles | ||
| Eyewear connected to a computer provides total immersion in the matrix. |
The world of Snow Crash offers a display that is short of actually connecting your brain to the Internet.
| He is wearing shiny goggles that wrap halfway round his head; the bows of the goggles have little earphones that are plugged into his outer ears.
The earphones have some built-in noise cancellation features. This sort of thing works best on steady noise... The goggles throw a light, smoky haze across his eyes, and reflect a distorted wide-angle view of a brilliantly lit boulevard that stretches off into an infinite blackness. This boulevard does not actually exist; it is a computer-generated view of an imaginary place. |
| Technovelgy from Snow Crash,
by Neal Stephenson. Published by Bantam in 1992 Additional resources -
|
A similar device is mentioned in William Gibson's 1996 novel Idoru - the eyephone.
If you are interested in a real-world analog to the sound system on data goggles, see the Science Fiction in the News story on Thump Eyewear.
Compare also to magic spectacles from Pygmalion's Spectacles (1935) by Stanley G. Weinbaum, video glasses from Islands in the Net (1988) by Bruce Sterling, Tru-Vu Lenses from Earth (1990) by David Brin, eyecaps from Starfish (1999) by Peter Watts, overlay specs from Halting State (2007) by Charles Stross and HUD glasses from Daemon (2009) by Daniel Suarez.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Snow Crash
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and Technology by Neal Stephenson
Tech news articles related to Snow Crash
Tech news articles related to works by Neal Stephenson
Data Goggles-related
news articles:
- Eye-Controlled Data Glasses
- What Can Magic Leap Expect From New 'Chief Futurist' Neal Stephenson?
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'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
'The greatest problem of all was the elimination of the human element of braking together with its inevitable time lag.'
'Across the ancient sea floor a dozen tall, blue-sailed Martian sand ships floated, like blue smoke.'
'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
