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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
 |
| Calculator Pad | ||
| Used to make psychohistoric calculations |
Everyone uses smartphones or tablet computers that are basically just a thin slab faced with glass. The idea was somewhat more exotic in 1951, when the only computers were room-sized, and the first computer terminal had only been invented a few years before.
| Seldon removed his calculator pad from the pouch at his belt. Men said he kept one beneath his pillow for use in moments of wakefulness. Its gray, glossy finish was slightly worn by use. Seldon's nimble fingers, spotted now with age, played along the hard plastic that rimmed it. Red symbols glowed out from the gray... "That represents the condition of the empire at present." |
| Technovelgy from Foundation,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Doubleday in 1951 Additional resources -
|
I have a Cassiopeia Pocket PC; its gray, glossy finish is also slightly worn by use (written in 2003!). Just to give you some material for comparison, in 1951 the big news in computers was the use of vacuum tubes. CBS purchased a Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) for use in predicting results in the 1952 presidential elections; it took up most of a 15'x15' room.
Note that Seldon's pocket computer was no mere calculator, also at it did not use the touch screen interface now all the rage in computing. (As it happens, I'm making this addition to the text on this web page using a iPad, another descendant of this idea.)
Bypassing the present, you might want to see the future view of this kind of device - the Control-Face, from William Gibson's Idoru. Compare to the blue optic plate from EM Forster's 1910 The Machine Stops.
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news articles:
- E-paper You Can Write On From Seiko Epson E Ink
| AI Worms That Spread |
| Great. Now AIs Have Access To Hacking Tools |
| Tongue-Controlled Tong Wearable Mouth Computer |
| Interpol Launches Metaverse For Law Enforcement |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
