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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein

Memo-Voice  
  Paper memos that read themselves out loud.  

Leon Wiseman, of the Terran Import Bureau of Standards, makes short work of his pile of memos thanks to one handy feature.

In his office at the Terran Import Bureau of Standards, the tall man gathered up the morning's memos from their wire basket, and, seating himself at his desk, arranged them for reading. He put on his iris lenses, lit a cigarette.

"Good morning," the first memo said in its tinny, chattery voice, as Wiseman ran his thumb along the line of pasted tape. Staring off through the open window at the parking lot, he listened to it idly. "Say, look what's wrong with you people down there? ...We sent that lot of Ganymedean toys..."

Wiseman ran his thumb down to the speaker's name and title.

"Joe Hauck," the memo-voice said. "Appleley's Children's."

Technovelgy from War Game, by Philip K. Dick.
Published by Galaxy Publishing in 1959
Additional resources -

You'd pay special attention to those toys from Ganymede, or any of the other outer planets and moons, if you had any brains at all.

Compare to talking tape from Distraction (1988) by Bruce Sterling.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from War Game
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip K. Dick
  Tech news articles related to War Game
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick

Memo-Voice-related news articles:
  - Flat Flexible Loudspeakers From Warwick Audio

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