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Little Printer Like Dick's Homeopape
Little Printer is a clever little device that scours the Web for news you can use, and then prints it out for you!
(Little printer video)
Little Printer lives in your front room and scours the Web on your behalf, assembling the content you care about into designed deliveries a couple of times a day.You configure Little Printer from your phone, and there’s some great content to choose from — it’s what Little Printer delivers that makes it really special. We have an incredible group of launch partners, and in the run-up to shipping we’re working with them all on custom publications.
Plus paper is like a screen that never turns off. You can stick to the fridge or tuck it in your wallet. You can scribble on it or tear it and give it to a friend.
Fans of sf great Philip K. Dick have no problem recognizing that Little Printer is the very embodiment of the homeopape (which is short for homeostatic newspaper) from his 1967 novel Ubik:
In a corner of the large room a chime sounded and a tinkling mechanical voice called, "I'm your free homeopape machine, a service supplied exclusively by all the fine Rootes hotels throughout Earth and the colonies. Simply dial the classification of news that you wish, and in a matter of seconds I'll speedily provide you with a fresh, up-to-the-minute homeopape tailored to your individual requirements; and, let me repeat, at no cost to you!"
(Read more about Dick's homeopape)
This is an older idea than you might think; Hugo Gernsback wrote about personalized news in his 1911 classic Ralph 124c 41+:
The morning "newspapers" were transmitted to the sleeping subscribers by wire at about 5 a.m. The newspaper office, notified by each subscriber what kind of news is desirable, furnished only such news.
From BergCloud via our friends at Frolix 8.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/30/2011)
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