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"I don't know why I write science fiction. The voices in my head told me to!"
- Charles Stross

News Roundup  
  A device that presents brief story outlines, any of which can be chosen to find details.  

Google almost has this; if they combined news.google.com and video.google.com, and then let you record it into your Gmail server space, they'd have it.

He tucked away a quarter litre of sweet-lemon juice and went to work seriously on the coffee before turning on the news roundup.

The news contained nothing fit to be recorded permanently. No news, he thought, makes for a happy country but a dull breakfast. The machine called out the plugs for a dozen stories while the accompanying flash pictures zipped past without Hamilton's disturbing the setting... The announcer proclaimed, "Diana's Playground Opened to the Public!"; the flash panned from a crescent moon down to the brutal mountain surface... Hamilton slapped the tell-me-more.

Technovelgy from Beyond This Horizon, by Robert Heinlein.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1942
Additional resources -

Note that this device is better than Tivo or DVRs, because it provides you with a quick verbal list of available items. Like a DVR, it is equipped with a way to record an item permanently.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Beyond This Horizon
  More Ideas and Technology by Robert Heinlein
  Tech news articles related to Beyond This Horizon
  Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein

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Science Fiction Timeline
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Science Fiction in the News

Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Predictions
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'

Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'

Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'

Splendid View Of Eclipse From Orbit Visualized And Repurposed By Arthur C. Clarke
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'

Bespoke Environment Music From AIs
'Call 'em Winter Mute," said the other, making it two words.'

Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'

SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'

Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'

NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'

More SF in the News

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