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"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Hotdesk | ||
| A desk space that was itself ready for input. |
Just a term, really; not a lot of explanation. The concept, it seems to me, is that of a desk that has all of the functions of a modern cubicle built-in: phone, computer, network access, and so forth.
| She propped her feet on the ledge of a hotdesk. She wore meticulous little reproductions of lineman's boots, buckled across the instep and stoutly laced to the ankle. |
| From Idoru,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1996 Additional resources -
|
As a person who has spent a considerable part of his life in cubicles, I'm trying to imagine one that would be higher tech and more interesting. So, rather than thinking of a computer as something you add to a cubicle, imagine sitting in the computer or being surrounded by it. The calendar on your wall? A flat panel display with a touch screen. The phone? Can't even see it; you come in and the cube tells you what you missed, including emails. Sit at the desk anywhere, and a keyboard is projected from little ports onto the desk surface; your finger motions tell what needs to be typed in (or dialed, in the case of a phone number).
When will Steelcase get together with Gateway and produce the hotcube? Only time will tell.
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''... major cities of Earth have free electrical power conveniently processed from their own noise.'
'The appearance was enough like a giant witch's broom to justify the nickname.'
'A vast circle of scarlet stars came up into the greenish desert dusk.'
'He had constructed an organ, a brain, of metal, entirely inorganic and lifeless...'
'I shall never forget the sight... when the yellow gleam of the precious metal appeared under the star dust.'
Oh, and now I suppose someone will develop the robotic porch pirate.
'This thing will start at one end of ...a house and build it complete to the other end, following drawings only.'
