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"The germinal societies like Singapore and communist Hong Kong may give us a mutant capitalism that is both virulent and efficient. This is a significant cultural danger."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| News Clown | ||
| A person who delivers specially selected light news. |
This is not a device, so it does not, strictly speaking, belong here. However, I'm adding it anyway.
| An hour before his morning program on channel six, ranking news clown Jim Briskin sat in his private office with his production staff, conferring on the report of an unknown possibly hostile flotilla detected at eight hundred astronomical units from the sun. It was big news, of course. But how should it be presented to his several-billion viewers scattered over three planets and seven moons?
Peggy Jones, his secretary, lit a cigarette and said. "Don't alarm them, Jim-Jam. Do it folksy-style... "Folksy-style," Jim Briskin said glumly. "I grin and say, Hey look comrades - it's happened at last, the thing we all feared, ha ha..." "Is there any lighter piece of news?" Peggy asked. "By which you could open your program? The sponsor would like that... See what you can do. Mutant cow obtains voting franchise in court case in Alabama... you know." |
| Technovelgy from Stand-By,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy in 1963 Additional resources -
|
Just in case you thought that the trend toward news as entertainment was a recent idea.
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| California Governor Candidate Calls For Voting By Phone |
| Chinese Hospital Tries Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron' Cosplay |
| A Remarkable Coincidence |
| Is It Time To Forbid Human Driving? |
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'...each of them is a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk who actually lived.'
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.'
'... every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions.'
'Completely silent, accurate up to about twenty meters. No recoil...'
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
