Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn't often, on their own, the hard way."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| Speaker Chips | ||
| Integrated circuit chips placed in books; they could read the book and advertise it. |
I think I can wait for this product. It is bad enough that bookstores place little slivers of metal here and there in the book, as antitheft devices.
| Without thinking, Kaye turned right and found herself in the religious section. Most of the shelves were filled with brightly colored apocalypse novels. The E-paper holograms leaped from lurid covers as she passed: endtime, rapture, revelation, demons and dark angels. Most of the books had speaker chips that could read out the entire story. The same chips replaced jacket copy with vocal come-ons. The shelves murmured softly in a wave, like ghosts triggered by Kaye's brief passage. |
| From Darwin's Children,
by Greg Bear. Published by Del Rey in 2003 Additional resources -
|
You can actually find real things like this on shelves in stores - just not in United States. I saw a light saber that a friend of mine had purchased for his son in Japan. The light saber had a voice chip installed inside it; when you bought the device in its original package, the light saber was connected to the package. You could push buttons on the outside of the package, and the light saber would tell you, in Japanese, about the product.
I guess I should be glad that those little slivers of metal used as anti-theft devices can't talk. Hearing "I hope you intend to pay for me..." over and over would be irritating.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Darwin's Children
More Ideas
and Technology by Greg Bear
Tech news articles related to Darwin's Children
Tech news articles related to works by Greg Bear
Speaker Chips-related
news articles:
- Product RFID Tags Now Play Jingles
- VW Talking Newspaper Ad
| 'Facetime Facelift' Beautifies Video Chats |
| Meeting Wendy Of Wendy's |
| Narrative Science And Phil Dick's Homeostatic Newspaper |
| BookTrack Adds Sound To Books |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
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.
|
'Very tiny pseudo insects that... can unite to form a superordinate system.'
Great, an autonomous slamhound. It is cute, though.
'The smoky globe, hung in the vault, was shot with colored light...'
'The electric cook was stirring empty nothing in a pan, with a zeal worthy a dozen eggs.'
