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
 |
Douglas Adams Your Babel Fish Is Ready - The Pilot By Waverly
The Pilot is a wearable device that slips easily into your ear, translating the words of others into your preferred language.
(The Pilot, a Babel Fish!
At launch, it will support English, Spanish, French and Italian, with additional languages available 'soon after', including 'East Asian, Hindi, Semitic, Arabic, Slavic, and African.' Some users will have to pay to get additional language packs. The firm warned: 'Every language has various dialects and the earpiece is designed to translate common dialects, although thick accents could disrupt this.'Waverly Labs plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo where interested people will be able to pre-order the Pilot for between $129 (£90) and $179 (£125) but it's expected to retail for between $250 (£174) and $300 (£209).
Pre-orders are expected to open from 25 May, with the earpieces shipping between autumn and next spring, on a first-come-first-served basis. They will come in three colours.
Assuming this is the real deal, the Pilot is a pretty good implementation of the Babel Fish, an amazingly unlikely universal translator from Douglas Adams' 1979 novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
(The Babel Fish diagram)
Via Daily Mail and Waverly Labs..
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/12/2016)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Communication ")
'A Sign in Space' Gives Practice In Decoding ET Messages
'... it will be easy to form an alphabet which shall enable us to converse with the inhabitants of the moon.' - Jules Verne, 1867.
MyManu Titan 'Screenless Smartphone'
'...the programmed software includes procedures for translating most normal variations of voice, idiom, accent, and other variable modalities into a computer-oriented sim-script.' - Frederik Pohl, 1966.
'Courier Commons' By Tomorrow Lab, From Karl Schroeder (and Bruce Sterling?)
'The pokkecon rang again. *The coffee’s for him?* Tsuyoshi said.' - Bruce Sterling, 1998.
Mouth Haptics Invented By Frederik Pohl In 1965, CMU Now Has Prototype
'What he got was indeed a kiss. It was disconcerting. No kissing lips were visible.' - Frederik Pohl, 1965.
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 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
Current News
I Didn't Know You Can Already Buy Flesh Putty
'I filled your bullet hole with flesh putty and the lattice.'
'A Sign in Space' Gives Practice In Decoding ET Messages
'... it will be easy to form an alphabet which shall enable us to converse with the inhabitants of the moon.'
Melting Permafrost Endangers Infrastructure
'From the tower's huge octagonal base radiate wide silvery strips...'
EELS Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor For Enceladus
'It was about five feet long... a black bullet head and red camera eyes.'
Lazy Lawyer's Trust In ChatGPT Misplaced
'The Law Society has strict rules on the use of pseudo-intelligent software...'
Paradromics Implant FDA 'Breakthrough Device'
'I used my implant to tell MILLIE what we wanted...'
Mice, At Least, Can Sober Up Quickly
'Then draw some aldodote-vitamin pills from the medic.'
Is It Time For Lunar Farside Telescopes?
'Mount Ambarzumian Observatory, on Farside.'
Spaceflight Vertigo Solved By NASA Releasing The Kraken
"I threw up in my helmet."
TM-62 Loitering Ground Landmine
Runaway movie comes to life!
Helpful Robots In Science Fiction
'If you douse me again... I'm donating you to a city college.'
Lunar Pogo Stick - Retro Technovelgy From 1968
'Lucky touched the leap knob...'
MIT And Rice Create Blade Runner Photo Analysis
Rick Deckard, your photo analysis is ready.
SayCan with PaLM - Google's Robot Helper
The older I get, the more interested I am in helpful robots.
Real-Life Mind-Reading With MRI
'So you see, you can hide nothing from me. I am about to know you better than anyone has ever known you.'
Whisper Aero Ultraquiet Electric Aviation
'A white electric plane approached at great speed...'
