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"I think engineering will supply our demand for a "spiritual" life after meat death."
- Bart Kosko
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| Speaker Chips | ||
| Integrated circuit chips placed in books; they could read the book and advertise it. |
I think I can wait for this product. It is bad enough that bookstores place little slivers of metal here and there in the book, as antitheft devices.
| Without thinking, Kaye turned right and found herself in the religious section. Most of the shelves were filled with brightly colored apocalypse novels. The E-paper holograms leaped from lurid covers as she passed: endtime, rapture, revelation, demons and dark angels. Most of the books had speaker chips that could read out the entire story. The same chips replaced jacket copy with vocal come-ons. The shelves murmured softly in a wave, like ghosts triggered by Kaye's brief passage. |
| From Darwin's Children,
by Greg Bear. Published by Del Rey in 2003 Additional resources -
|
You can actually find real things like this on shelves in stores - just not in United States. I saw a light saber that a friend of mine had purchased for his son in Japan. The light saber had a voice chip installed inside it; when you bought the device in its original package, the light saber was connected to the package. You could push buttons on the outside of the package, and the light saber would tell you, in Japanese, about the product.
I guess I should be glad that those little slivers of metal used as anti-theft devices can't talk. Hearing "I hope you intend to pay for me..." over and over would be irritating.
Compare to the memo-voice from War Game (1959) by Philip K. Dick.
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Tech news articles related to Darwin's Children
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Speaker Chips-related
news articles:
- Product RFID Tags Now Play Jingles
- VW Talking Newspaper Ad
| 'Facetime Facelift' Beautifies Video Chats |
| Meeting Wendy Of Wendy's |
| Narrative Science And Phil Dick's Homeostatic Newspaper |
| BookTrack Adds Sound To Books |
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Science Fiction
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'THE red tennis robot scooted desperately across the court...'
'The Consul remembered his first glimpse of the kilometer-long treeship...'
'Do you know what window washing used to cost by the hour?'
'Once the target is confirmed, it uses an IR laser to send a coded signal back to the parent, clearing it to attack.'
'I filled your bullet hole with flesh putty and the lattice.'
'... it will be easy to form an alphabet which shall enable us to converse with the inhabitants of the moon.'
'From the tower's huge octagonal base radiate wide silvery strips...'
'It was about five feet long... a black bullet head and red camera eyes.'
'The Law Society has strict rules on the use of pseudo-intelligent software...'
