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"I share the view of Pythagoras that the world is number. The ultimate substrate of the universe is math. There's no way to test that - it's pure metaphysical speculation."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Talking Head | ||
| A mechanical head (with an analog voice) used as the output terminal for a computer. |
One of the elements I most admire in Gibson's work is the use of archaic devices to provide a background for the high technology elements. A favorite is this talking head, which spurns inexpensive digital voice reproduction in favor of an elaborate mechanism which creates a woodwind-like sound.
| …a head, an intricately worked bust, cloisonné over platinum, studded with seed pearls and lapis. ..The thing was a computer terminal…it could talk. And not in a synth-voice, but with a beautiful arrangement of gears and miniature organ pipes. It was a baroque thing for anyone to have constructed, a perverse thing, because synth-voice chips cost next to nothing…Smith jacked the head into his computer and listened as the melodious, inhuman voice piped the figures of last year's tax return. |
| Technovelgy from Neuromancer,
by William Gibson. Published by Phantasia Press in 1984 Additional resources -
|
There are lots of other examples; I particularly liked his description of the living quarters of the owner of an entire orbital village, which contained "old" pieces of technology that are current in the 1980's, when the novel was written.
Compare to the artificially produced speech from Hotel Cosmos (1938) by Raymond Z. Gallun.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Neuromancer
More Ideas
and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to Neuromancer
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Talking Head-related
news articles:
- WT-6 Waseda Talking Robot Head From Neuromancer
- WAHHA GO GO Laughing Head
- Musical Robotic Head
- Korean Talking Robotic Head
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'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
'It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings.'
'...the spot was a lonely one in an uncharted region, far from the normal lanes of space traffic.'
