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"The point sticks in your head: physics rules. Virtue does not triumph unless the physics allows it."
- Larry Niven

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 in the News

TRANSFORM Dynamic Furniture Concept Becomes What You Need
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SnapBot Robots - You Choose Their Legs And They Choose Their Gaits
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.

Dino From Magical Toys An AI Companion To Children
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'

Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''

Darpa 'Defiant' Unmanned Autonomous Ship
'There was no wheel, and no steersman!'

What's The Best Way To Ship And Unpack Humanoid Robots?
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'

DNA Printed Book By Isaac Asimov Now Available
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'

AI Computer Chip Designs Passeth Human Understanding
'It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings.'

Space Traffic Management (STM) Needed Now
'...the spot was a lonely one in an uncharted region, far from the normal lanes of space traffic.'

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