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"Retire? Yeah, I want to die with my head in the typewriter. That's my idea of retirement."
- Alfred Bester
 |
| Speakwrite | ||
| A dictation machine that also transcribes the speech into typed words. |
In the story, the effortless use of the speakwrite further emphasizes that written history is much less certain than it seems.
| With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. |
| From 1984,
by George Orwell. Published by Unknown in 1948 Additional resources -
|
Thanks to Alex Mair for contributing this item.
Isaac Asimov makes good use of this idea in his 1953 book Second Foundation; the transcription machine used by a high school student shows the Speakwrite in a consumer model.
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Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
There's a lesson in this for neural net AI engineers everywhere.
