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"[Science fiction is] anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out."
- Gregory Benford

Comsole (Home Communications Console)  
  A home computer, connected to data services.  

The communications console looked as if it dated back to the last century. Although all the elements were familiar - the blank gray screen, the alphanumeric keyboard, the camera lens and speaker grille - something about the design gave it an old-fashioned appearance...

The home communications console - or Comsole - had reached its technological plateau in the early twenty-first century and Duncan was prepared to bet that there were units on Earth that had given continuous service for over two hundred years.

Technovelgy from Imperial Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke.
Published by Harcourt Brace in 1976
Additional resources -

It worked with the Minisec:

...for dealing with vast amounts of information it was desirable to link the 'Sec to the much larger screen of the standard Comsole. This could be done through the unit's optical interface - a tiny Transmit/Recieive bulls-eye operating in the near ultraviolet. As long as this lens was in visual range of the corresponding sensor on a Comsole, the two units could happily exchange information at the rate of megabits per second.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Imperial Earth
  More Ideas and Technology by Arthur C. Clarke
  Tech news articles related to Imperial Earth
  Tech news articles related to works by Arthur C. Clarke

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