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"Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn't often, on their own, the hard way."
- Robert Heinlein
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| Control Screen | ||
| An alien display device. |
Earthman Jan Rodricks had stowed away on one of the Overlord's space ships, hoping to see their world. Sent back to Earth, he watched as the aliens piloted the great spacecraft.
| He stood behind the three pilots (why, he wondered, did they need so many?) watching the patterns come and go on the great screen that dominated the control room. The colors and shapes it showed were meaningless to him: he assumed that they were conveying information which in a vessel designed for men would have been displayed on banks of meters. But sometimes the screen showed the surrounding star fields, and soon, he hoped, it would be showing Earth. |
| Technovelgy from Childhood's End,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Not Known in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Later in the novel, Rodricks is dictating his description of an event to Karellen the Overlord:
"Is this how it talks to you, Karellen, in colors and shapes like these? I remember the control screens on your ship and the patterns that went across them, speaking to you in some visual language which your eyes could read..."
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Childhood's End
More Ideas
and Technology by Arthur C. Clarke
Tech news articles related to Childhood's End
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur C. Clarke
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news articles:
- Multi-Touch Interaction Overlord Control Screen
| iPhone Air Fulfils Jobs' Promise From 2007 - A Giant Screen! |
| Transparent 4K OLED Wireless TV From LG |
| DOTPad Braille Device Offers Live Access |
| Transparent MicroLED Screen From Samsung |
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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'
