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"The whole problem of energy sources is going to be solved by little solutions, not by some big new piece of technology that does everything. We got into this crisis by believing that we had one big piece of technology that would do everything (oil)."
- Gregory Benford

Mentophone  
  A device that facilitates long-distance telepathy.  

A remarkable attempt at visualizing what it might be like to communicate with a telepath technology.

A buzzer hummed at Adams and he flipped up a tumbler on his desk.

"What is it?"

An android voice answered. "It's Mr. Thorne, sir, on the mentophone from Andrelon."

"Thank you, Alice," Adams said.

He clicked open a drawer and took out the cap, placed it on his head, adjusted it with steady fingers. Thoughts flickered through his brain, disjointed, random thoughts, all faint and faraway. Ghost thoughts drifting through the universe - residual thoughts from the minds of things in time and space that was unguessable...

Adams closed his eyes and settled back.

"Hello, Thorne," he thought.

Thorne's thought came in, thin and scratchy over the space of over fifty light years...

A high singsong thought came in and skipped across his brain...

"Start over again, Thorne. A ghost came along and blotted you out..."

Technovelgy from Time Quarry, by Clifford Simak.
Published by Galaxy in 1950
Additional resources -

Compare to the taprisiot monitor from Frank Herbert's Dosadi Experiment (1977).

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Time Quarry
  More Ideas and Technology by Clifford Simak
  Tech news articles related to Time Quarry
  Tech news articles related to works by Clifford Simak

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