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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Green Bullet | ||
| A very compact (for 1950) radio transceiver, worn in the ear like a hearing aid. |
In the near future presented in this famous novel, no one reads anymore; everyone gets their ideas and news from clowns and good-looking news morons on huge television screens in their homes. Obviously a very far-fetched scenario.
In addition, books are illegal and "firemen" exist to set fire to homes with books in them. Guy Montag is one such fireman, who loses his faith in the system and wants to know more about the world of ideas that he is missing. He meets Faber, who offers to go with Montag via a small transceiver hidden in his ear.
| "My cowardice is of such a passion, complementing the revolutionary spirit that lives in its shadow, I was forced to design this." He picked up a small green object no larger than a .22 bullet. "It looks like a seashell radio." "And something more! It listens! If you put it in your ear, Montag, I can sit comfortably home, warming my frightened bones, and hear and analyze the firemen's world, find its weaknesses, without danger. I'm the queen bee, safe in the hive. You will be the drone, the traveling ear..." Montag placed the green bullet in his ear |
| From Fahrenheit 451,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Doubleday in 1953 Additional resources -
|
You might want to compare a very similar treatment (in a literary sense) in Nanotime, by Bart Kosko (see Raisin). Both of these devices carry on the tradition of the wise companion, found in all of the world's literary traditions.
An interesting contrast can be made to the seashell radio from the same novel.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Fahrenheit 451
More Ideas
and Technology by Ray Bradbury
Tech news articles related to Fahrenheit 451
Tech news articles related to works by Ray Bradbury
Green Bullet-related
news articles:
- Bradbury's Green Bullet Made Possible With Bluetooth
| 'Courier Commons' By Tomorrow Lab, From Karl Schroeder (and Bruce Sterling?) |
| Mouth Haptics Invented By Frederik Pohl In 1965, CMU Now Has Prototype |
| True Crime Live Podcasting In Fiction |
| Zoom Adds Real-Time, Live Translation |
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With each successive print, our model needed to incorporate more structural ingredients to minimize print failures.
'... Wendis stared thoughtfully at the brilliant lines on the spectroscope screen.'
'A special spot-wavex scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully.'
'... it was as if the upper part had been removed, like a cut deck of cards.'
Sumomo will get those office workers into good shape!
'... who let their handbag computers carry all the conversation.'
'Thus it came about that the search for a planetiferous sun near a white dwarf star was not unduly prolonged...'
'He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides.'
