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"This is a predictive tool I've used: There are goals we've sought for ten thousand years, and we'll go on seeking them. Instant transport and travel, immortality (or at least longevity and miracle cures.), instant learning …"
- Larry Niven
 |
| Lecton | ||
| A device that would read aloud an electronic text book. |
Waking up in the future is never easy - after a few centuries, technology advances.
| The bookstore resembled, instead, an electronic laboratory. The books were crystals with recorded contents. They can be read the aid of an opton, which was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch, successive pages of the text appeared on it. But optons were little used, the sales-robot told me. The public preferred lectons - like lectons read out loud, they could be set to any voice, tempo, and modulation. Only scientific publications having a very limited distribution were still printed, on a plastic imitation paper. |
| From Return from the Stars,
by Stanislaw Lem. Published by Not known in 1961 Additional resources -
|
Compare this item to the reading machine from Robert Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land.
Notice also that this is not simply a "book on tape." This is a performance that the user can alter - setting voice, tempo and modulation. See this article on Vocaloid Voice - Soul Singing Synthesis for a modern example of this technology.
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- Kindle 2 Reads Aloud, As SF Writers Predicted
- iPad With VoiceOver Reads Aloud
| Rats Communicate Brain-to-Brain |
| Microsoft Demos Spoken English To Chinese 'Universal Translator' |
| Kyocera Speakerless Smartphone (ala Gernsback) |
| Wavii Follows Your Selected News |
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