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"People are choosing to allow television and Electronic Arts to do all their imagining for them."
- Peter Watts

News Roundup  
  A device that presents brief story outlines, any of which can be chosen to find details.  

Google almost has this; if they combined news.google.com and video.google.com, and then let you record it into your Gmail server space, they'd have it.

He tucked away a quarter litre of sweet-lemon juice and went to work seriously on the coffee before turning on the news roundup.

The news contained nothing fit to be recorded permanently. No news, he thought, makes for a happy country but a dull breakfast. The machine called out the plugs for a dozen stories while the accompanying flash pictures zipped past without Hamilton's disturbing the setting... The announcer proclaimed, "Diana's Playground Opened to the Public!"; the flash panned from a crescent moon down to the brutal mountain surface... Hamilton slapped the tell-me-more.

Technovelgy from Beyond This Horizon, by Robert Heinlein.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1942
Additional resources -

Note that this device is better than Tivo or DVRs, because it provides you with a quick verbal list of available items. Like a DVR, it is equipped with a way to record an item permanently.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Beyond This Horizon
  More Ideas and Technology by Robert Heinlein
  Tech news articles related to Beyond This Horizon
  Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein

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Science Fiction in the News

Prufrock-MB2 Ready In Nashville
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'

DIY Robotic Content Farming
'The chief wheeled to the master machine and pressed a button.'

Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'

The Amazing Lightfoot Electric Scooter With Solar Assist
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'

Fully Electric, Fully Automated Vegetable‑growing Agribots
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'

Vero Robotic Dog With Vacuum Cleaner Feet
'Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted.'

AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'

Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'

US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'

Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'

More SF in the News

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