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"The answer to the problem of information overload on the Net is reputations… engineer a system called a reputation server."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Telebook | ||
| A book made available in text on a television screen. |
| They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly... and then, when they turned back to the page before, it had the same words on it...
"Gee," said Tommy. "What a waste. When you're through with the book, you just throw it away, I guess. Our television screen must have had a million books on it and its good for plenty more. I wouldn't throw it away. "Same with mine," said Margie. She was eleven and hadn't seen as many telebooks as Tommy had. |
| Technovelgy from The Fun They Had,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Children's Magazine in 1951 Additional resources -
|
This is not quite the same as an electronic book; but it does pretty effectively predict the existence of services like the Gutenberg project, which has many thousands of books onscreen in text form.
Take a look at the description of tanks from Murray Leinster's 1946 short story A Logic Named Joe. It specifically mentions the idea of a central repository that can find requested information and then display it on a screen (a "logic or vision-receiver) at your own home.
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'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
