4 ms·
50 years ago, a story describing modern mobile phones and online encyclopedias
When the middle class was discovering the fixed phone in the 60', a sci-fi author told stories about people using phones with screens and cameras, that where used to access online encyclopedias.
p38: "Occasionally when orbiting Bennie Noakes punches an encyclopedia connection on his phone and marvels at what it tells him"
p40: "phone efficient with viewscreens"
p61: "Eventually she scribbled a list and reached for the switch of the phone, after another quick glance at herself to make sure the image on the screen would be fitting."
p87: "However, when he had summed up what he could recall of Beninia—privately wondering all the time why Norman didn't simply go to the phone and punch for an encyclopedia"
p129: "He approached the phone. But that wouldn't do—just conversing with an image on a screen. He wanted to see and hear strangers, to be reassured of their independence from himself."
p130: "If that phone were to ring, and the Colonel were on the screen activating me, telling me to report for duty at once"
p176: "Stretched out on the couch naked, hair dyed the fashionable bronze shade that everyone said suited her so well, a screen protecting the majority of her body from the scan of the camera on the phone but bathing her in the blue-white of the sunshine lamps"
p352: ""Same with the screen on your phone."
p418: "Donald drew a deep breath. What he was going to say could have been found as easily through an encyclopedia connection over the phone"
etc, etc...
- JPLeRouzic 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar
- ahazred8ta 9y agoHeinlein described mobile pocket phones in 1948, 1953, and 1962. (although they were probably analog) http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=595 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=595
- JPLeRouzic 9y agoAmazing, but a bit different prediction, Heilein (from the link provided) described mobile phones at a time where there was walky-talkies (invented in 1937). The difference between walky-talkies and mobile phones is in the lack of phone switches and base stations, not so much in the terminal. Brunner described phones (not necessarily mobile) that had a camera and a screen and that were used to access encyclopedias. There was at that time ATT's picturephone, but it was point to point connections through the switched network. Given it used a Vidicon tube for the camera an a cathodic tube for the screen, it must have been quite large. And it was not used to find information on online encyclopedias. Hey it was published even before Arpanet was launched!
- JPLeRouzic 9y agoYou just started me foraging in Wikipedia :-) There was a public wireless phone system in trains in Germany that was launched in 1924. And behind the iron curtain, there were people that did develop pocket phones (one weighted only 70g). Thanks for starting this discussion! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones
- saluki 9y agoScience fiction has always been amazing at predicting the future. Totally amazing how creative our writers and movie makers are and even more amazing how much of it becomes reality. Hope to see a lot more fiction becoming reality in my lifetime.