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"Poised between intransigent scepticism and uncritical credulity, it [science fiction] is par excellence the literature of the open mind."
- John Brunner
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| Seashell Radio (Thimble Radios) | ||
| Small radios that fit into the ears like hearing aids or ear buds. |
Mildred wears two of them; none of that painful reality stuff for her.
| The little mosquito-delicate dancing hum in the air, the electrical murmur of a hidden wasp snug in its special pink warm nest. The music was almost loud enough so he could follow the tune. Without turning on the light he imagined how this room would look. His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of the tomb, her eyes fixed in the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time. |
| From Fahrenheit 451,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Doubleday in 1953 Additional resources -
|
A classic description of the human animal in the age of technology.
For a current view of the state-of-the-art in Seashell radios, see the following commercial product - the Lobeman.
It turns out that these radios were not so far off; Bradbury wrote the novel in 1953; take a look at these pictures from Modern Mechanix magazine in November, 1959.
The article describes it as "radios as small as sugar cubes."
An interesting contrast can be made to the green bullet from the same novel; it's a similar technology, but for a different purpose. Check it out!
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Fahrenheit 451
More Ideas
and Technology by Ray Bradbury
Tech news articles related to Fahrenheit 451
Tech news articles related to works by Ray Bradbury
Seashell Radio (Thimble Radios)-related
news articles:
- VeriTouch iVue: Fun, Fashionable Media Player With Military-Grade Encryption
- RF Cochlea Chip 'Seashell Radio'
- Cortana Clip - The New In-Ear Wearables
| Mouth Haptics Invented By Frederik Pohl In 1965, CMU Now Has Prototype |
| True Crime Live Podcasting In Fiction |
| Zoom Adds Real-Time, Live Translation |
| Will The Super Bowl Go To Pay Per View? |
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'Why must we travel ever faster in a seemingly insatiable desire to conquer space and time?'
'It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame.'
'Electronic differentiation of the grotesque, as it says in the specifications - in man, a sense of humor.'
'And as the ball bulleted downward on a screaming slant, it shrank!'
'Hufhuf oil held in static tension... within a viewing tube...'
'The wings were at full spread-rest, their delicate metal interleavings extended.'
'A record that wouldn't get lost and couldn't be destroyed.'
