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"I think we're still on that topic, still trying to figure out what computers are, how they change us, why we use them."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Spotcast | ||
| A new form of one-to-many communication. |
I don't think anyone is really using this as a word; it's strangely evocative of podcasting or Periscope or other technology that let's one person speak to many.
And maybe the powerful would rather they didn't.
| “I was thinking about a columnist... Tenning.”
She shrugged. “I know about him. He isn’t with the Star now. He spotcasts.” “That’s... a radio—” “Not any more. Tenning’s a hot shot now, Dave. Everybody listens to him.” “What does he talk about?” “Gossip. And politics. People listen — ” Yeah, people listen to that dirty ringer, and he moulds public opinion. He moulds it the way the big boys want. That’s why they grabbed me in nineteen forty-five. I wasn’t at the top then, but I had the public ear. I was getting good audience reactions. Spotting key men to work out their plan for them — Ringers, doppelgangers, in the right places. Painless psychology, sugar-coated propaganda. And a world moving, leaving Dave Tenning behind, a simply immense sphere beginning to turn from its course, gathering momentum as a thousand doppelgangers shoved it along. |
| Technovelgy from The Little Things,
by Henry Kuttner. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1946 Additional resources -
|
Compare to True-vu lenses from Earth (1990) by David Brin, fido from Riders of the Purple Wage (1967) by Philip Jose Farmer and Newstaper Gear from Flash Crowd (1972) by Larry Niven. See also the televisor from Newscast (1939) by Harl Vincent.
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'The observation vehicle was of that peculiar variety used in conveying a large number of people across rough terrain.'
'The real border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'I ... set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching for a habitable planet.'
'...haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'
'... oblongs were all over the floor and surfaces.'
