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"Poised between intransigent scepticism and uncritical credulity, it [science fiction] is par excellence the literature of the open mind."
- John Brunner
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| GPS Sunglasses | ||
| Sunglasses that contain both global positioning system components and cell phone services. |
Okay, so your sunglasses ring, you open them up and put them on. You see, projected on the lens of your sunglasses, whatever the other person is seeing (and presumably vice-versa). Not only that, the other person knows exactly where you are thanks to the GPS device built in to the sunglasses.
| …She slipped him a pair of Brazilian GPS sunglasses, with inbuilt phone and AM-FM radio. |
| Technovelgy from All Tomorrow's Parties,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1999 Additional resources -
|
Do you need these? Maybe not. But the people in William Gibson's endlessly inventive novels, this is the sort of urban nomadic stuff you need. And, if you're a true urban nomad, knowing where you are with GPS is perfect.
You're an engineer and you want to know it works? By all means, read this dense PDF - GPS Signal Availability in an Urban Area Receiver Performance Analysis.
In a hurry and you'd prefer to cut to the chase? Okay, it turns out that in urban environments subject to lots of signal shading, GPS signal availability can vary by 60%. You want details: try this:
"The results demonstrate the effectiveness of narrow correlator spacing technology in reducing the position errors caused by multipath from buildings in urban canyons."
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More Ideas
and Technology from All Tomorrow's Parties
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Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
| MIT Headset Lets You Communicate Without Speaking |
| Tongue Mouse Created By Valve Engineer |
| Skinput Uses Your Skin As An Input Device |
| AcceleGlove Open-Source Data Glove |
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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
