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"Does it open a new horizon for my thinking? Does it lead me to think new kinds of thoughts, that I would not otherwise perhaps have thought at all? These qualities are what [make] science fiction ...unique."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Reading Plaque | ||
| A tablet-sized display for reading. |
When you get right down to it, the only part of a CRT that people really need is the screen.
| Spivey regarded him for a long interval. Finally, he opened a slim briefcase and pulled out a large-format reading plaque. "I'd appreciate it if you'd leaf through this, Mr. Eng..."
He took the plaque... he put his thumb on the page-turn button and began skimming... [Spivey said] "You haven't seen the actual recording yet... Allow me." The man expertly dialed the correct data page. "This was taken by a high-altitude reconnaissance blimp..." |
| Technovelgy from Earth,
by David Brin. Published by Bantam in 1990 Additional resources -
|
This was a pretty good prediction for its time; I remember purchasing a 16-lb "laptop" with an orange gas plasma display in about 1988. The display was still three quarters of an inch thick.
If you want to see a pretty good picture of a real-world plaque, see the A4-Sized Color E-Paper Unrolled By Philips.
This idea has a number of sfnal predecessors. Larry Niven wrote about the poster tv in a 1976 story. Philip K. Dick wrote about a battery-powered 3D comic book in his 1965 classic The Zap Gun. Stanislaw Lem thought about an electronic book as one with but a single page between the covers - see the entry for opton - in 1961.
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'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.'
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.'
'It was almost unheard of for slunch to spread that fast...'
'He then started hand movements of definite pattern...'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
