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"The whole problem of energy sources is going to be solved by little solutions, not by some big new piece of technology that does everything. We got into this crisis by believing that we had one big piece of technology that would do everything (oil)."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Pocket Projector | ||
| A personal device for replaying media. |
| "Yes I've heard that sort of talk; Seldon, Second Empire, and so on. They put kids to sleep at night with the stuff. The young squirts curl up in the spare room with their pocket projectors and suck up Seldon thrillers. But it's strictly non-adult. Non-intelligent adult anyway." The trader shook his head. |
| Technovelgy from Foundation and Empire,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Doubleday in 1952 Additional resources -
|
One of the issues that fascinates me about this idea is the question of personal playback devices that were both small enough to fit in a pocket and were inexpensive enough to be given to children. In the modern era, we're used to the idea of the Walkman and the Nintendo game device, but what was available in the 1950's?
The only example I can think of is the Viewmaster, a simple mechanical device that used a circular piece of cardboard with tiny photographs for viewing. The Viewmaster was introduced in 1939.
Here's a sample commercial from the 1980's, thanks to the magic of Youtube:
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'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...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
