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"I don't know why I write science fiction. The voices in my head told me to!"
- Charles Stross
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| Mirror News DIsplay | ||
| The news of the day in a selected country is presented on a readable display before the reader. |
As far as I know, this is the first description of this idea.
| I commenced to eat, and immediately the same bell, which had announced the disappearance of the bill of fare, rang again. I looked up, and the mirror now contained the name of every state in the Republic, from Hudson's Bay to the Isthmus of Darien; and the names of all the nations of the world; each name being numbered. My attendant, perceiving my perplexity, called my attention to the fact that the sides of the table which had brought up my dinner contained another set of electric buttons, corresponding with the numbers on the mirror; and he explained to me that if I would select any state or country and touch the corresponding button the news of the day, from that state or country, would appear in the mirror. He called my attention to, the fact that every guest in the room had in front of him a similar mirror, and many of them were reading the news of the day as they ate.
I touched the knob corresponding with the name of the new state of Uganda, in Africa, and immediately there appeared in the mirror all the doings of the people of that state--its crimes, its accidents, its business, the output of its mines, the markets, the sayings and doings of its prominent men; in fact, the whole life of the community was unrolled before me like a panorama. |
| Technovelgy from Caesar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century,
by Ignatius Donnelly. Published by F.J. Shulte & Co in 1890 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Cinematophote (Blue Optic Plate) from The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster and to the newspad from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Arthur C. Clarke.
See also the personalized news from Ralph 124c 41 + (1911) by Hugo Gernsback and the homeopape from Ubik (1969) by Philip K. Dick.
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and Technology from Caesar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century
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