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"As a writer, I don't want to chew my cud. I don't want to have to spit out and regurgitate the same stuff again."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Sandbenders | ||
| A highly customized computer system; the opposite of a box from Gateway or Dell. |
Gibson's characters, the ones who are most interesting, always express themselves with interesting artifacts. The Sandbenders are a colony in Oregon; they make one-of-a-kind artifacts that are exactly the opposite of the computers to which we're all accustomed.
| "I like your computer," she said. "It looks like it was made by Indians or something." Chia looked down at her sandbenders. Turned off the red switch. "Coral," she said. "These are turquoise. The ones that look like ivory are the inside of a kind of nut. Renewable." "The rest is silver?" "Aluminum," Chia said. "They melt old cans they dig up on the beach cast it in sand molds. These panels are micarta. That's linen with this resin in it." |
| From Idoru,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1996 Additional resources -
|
Not even on Ebay. The Jargon File also notes that a sandbender is a person who works in the area of silicon lithography and the physical design of a computer integrated circuit chips. Silicon, of course, is what sand is mostly made of.
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- Calling All Sandbenders - PC Case Mod Contest!
| The Largest Virtual Universe! |
| ARM Wants To Build Brain Chips |
| Robot Swarms Controlled With Augmented Reality |
| Eterni.me - To Skype With The Dead |
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'Everyone was aware that the damned platform was wandering around in its own orbit...'
'In the crimson darkness, stewing warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and hormones...'
'They plop down on the Red and if the dust is deep enough ... they burrow in...'
Little robots cooperating can do big tasks. Eventually.
Ever wonder how you look when you enter a new part of a spacecraft?
