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"I'm strictly an ivory-tower person. I can explain things but I can't do things."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Comeye | ||
| A portable video camera, used by the mobile functionary to keep in touch with office. |
I don't think that there was a portable consumer product in 1984 that allowed you to send video over a computer or over phone lines.
In this excerpt, an important government worker observes an interrogation. His superiors want to know the results.
| Both of them looked at the functionary. That one turned and bent to his datacase. He removed a small comeye from it and stood with the screen concealed from his companions and Teg. The 'eye came alight with a green glow, which cast a sickly illumination over the observer's features. His self-important smile vanished. He moved his lips silently, words formed only for someone on that 'eye to see...
The green light danced on the functionary's face while he stared into the 'eye. Whoever communicated with him ws in agitated movement if that light meant anything... The green light winked off. The functionary clipped the 'eye to his waist, turned toward his companions and nodded once. |
| Technovelgy from Heretics of Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1984 Additional resources -
|
From the description, this device seemed to combine the picture taking and picture presentation features.
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'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
'The vast spinning sphere of Factory in the Sky loomed above and ahead of us, gleaming white against the unfathomable jet depths of surrounding space.'
'And if it doesn’t work,' inquired Lazarus, 'what does that make us? Sunspots?'
'The Dillard people had performed a miracle and put all the works in a girl-modeled case.'
'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
