Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"Does it open a new horizon for my thinking? Does it lead me to think new kinds of thoughts, that I would not otherwise perhaps have thought at all? These qualities are what [make] science fiction ...unique."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Personal Interest Profile (PIP) | ||
| A set of topics about which you would like to hear the latest news; known today as Google News Alerts. |
The principal engineer in charge of the space elevator project liked to keep up on the relevant news on his area of interest; so, he set up his Personal Interest Profile to make sure that his computer searched for what he needed in the flood of global news items.
| But the same technology that had eliminated one set of tasks had created even more demanding successors. Of these, perhaps the most important was the design of the Personal Interest Profile.
Most men updated their PIP on New Year's Day, or their birthday. Morgan's list contained fifty items; he had heard of people with hundreds. They must spend all their waking hours battling with the flood of information, unless they
were like those notorious pranksters who enjoyed setting up News Alerts on their consoles for such classic improbabilities as:
Eggs, Dinosaur, hatching of
Usually, of course, egotism and professional requirements ensured that the subscriber's own name was the first item on every list. Morgan was no exception, but the entries that followed were slightly unusual: These names covered most of the variations used by the media, and ensured that he saw at least ninety percent of the news items concerning the project. The vast majority of these were trivial, and sometimes he wondered if it was worth searching for them - the ones that really mattered would reach him quickly enough. |
| Technovelgy from The Fountains of Paradise,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Ballantine in 1978 Additional resources -
|
Today's reader will doubtless recognize the PIP as nothing less than the Google News Alert service. The Google Alerts were first beta'd in August of 2003. Just a quarter of a century after Clarke published the idea.
Compare this idea with the very similar interests profile from Frederik Pohl's 1966 novel The Age of the Pussyfoot. Also, see the personalized news from Ralph 124c 41 + (1911), by Hugo Gernsback, which had the idea of a newspaper printed based on general subscriber interests.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 2 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Fountains of Paradise
More Ideas
and Technology by Arthur C. Clarke
Tech news articles related to The Fountains of Paradise
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur C. Clarke
Personal Interest Profile (PIP)-related
news articles:
- Yotify Scouts Work The Web For You
- Wavii Follows Your Selected News
- Should You Put Your Virtual Assistants In Your Will?
- 'AI Assistants' Are Actually Less Reliable For News
| 'Facetime Facelift' Beautifies Video Chats |
| Meeting Wendy Of Wendy's |
| Narrative Science And Phil Dick's Homeostatic Newspaper |
| BookTrack Adds Sound To Books |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
