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"There's a poetry in the materials we use to construct our world of artifacts; it speaks of our long history as a technological species."
- William Gibson
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| Hand Computer | ||
| A small pocket-sized computing device. |
As far as I know, this is the first use of this phrase in science-fiction.
| Foster stared at his hand computer with distaste. It worked well enough but every operation had to be manually controlled and the answers were obtained in code. Now if he could use the school computer — Well, why dream, he felt conspicuous enough, as it was, carrying a hand computer under his arm every evening as he left his office. |
| Technovelgy from The Dead Past,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1956 Additional resources -
|
Niven and Pournelle used this phrase in Mote in God’s Eye:
There was a link. When the crew and scientists convened abort HMS Lenin to discuss the HMS McCarthur they logged in to their pocket computers and linked to the ship's main computer. When the xenobiologists convened on New Scotland to discuss the Motie representitives they tested the link between their hand computers and the main computer. When the Brownie took the pocket computer apart and then reassembled it, Sally tested it by linking to the ship's computer.
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'...support the interior human structure against Jupiter’s pull.'
'Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray...'
'The German chemists have discovered how to supply the needed elements in compact, undiluted form...'
'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
'The greatest problem of all was the elimination of the human element of braking together with its inevitable time lag.'
