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"...a market economy is essentially a genetic algorithm for solving resource allocation problems..."
- Charles Stross
 |
| 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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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
