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"I can remember when the first pulsars were discovered. I was able to go and sit down and listen to graduate students talking about what their theories, to explain what pulsars really were."
- Vernor Vinge
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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
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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
| Transparent 4K OLED Wireless TV From LG |
| DOTPad Braille Device Offers Live Access |
| Transparent MicroLED Screen From Samsung |
| Augmented Reality Book Covers Reveal The Inner Book |
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
