This story should be standard reading for the whole/. community. Forester is generally known for seemily "fluffier" works like "Howard's End" or "A Room With A View." "Machine Stops," though, is an extraordinary work of hard sci-fi -- for instance, it is the first mention in literature of anything resembling a television and his description of how people interact through the machine in question is spot on for our current computer saturated first-world existence.
Put it on your "machine" (computer or PDA) for a hardy sardonic twist: http://www.gre.ac.uk/~cm34/teaching/readin g/machin estops.html
Wells and Gibson may have their own bleak messages to convey (I think they just being honest, really) but Sameul Butler is generally credited with creating the idea of "dystopia" (specifically, the opposite of a utopia). Check out his story "Erehwon":
http://www.hoboes.com/html/FireBlade/Butler/Erew ho n/
This is, incidentally, the first use of the word Erewhon ("nowhere" spelled backwards) -- a much stolen and uncredited idea ever since.
While it's true that DLP systems don't run at some sort of magic uber-resolution, this doesn't sound right to me -- first of all, I remember hearing that the resolution was more like 5,000 pixels on the horizontal and second of all, that doesn't seem like the dimensions of a movie screen.
E. M. Forrester's (rather bitter) short story "The Machine Stops" has clear descriptions of a device later called "television." The story was written in 1909.
Slashdot Mirror
There was a BBC produced Hitchhiker's TV series. Even though it was of fairly low quality, some people claim to like it.
Whunk!
-Dylan
This story should be standard reading for the whole /. community. Forester is generally known for seemily "fluffier" works like "Howard's End" or "A Room With A View." "Machine Stops," though, is an extraordinary work of hard sci-fi -- for instance, it is the first mention in literature of anything resembling a television and his description of how people interact through the machine in question is spot on for our current computer saturated first-world existence.
n g/machin estops.html
Put it on your "machine" (computer or PDA) for a hardy sardonic twist:
http://www.gre.ac.uk/~cm34/teaching/readi
Spang!
-Dylan
Wells and Gibson may have their own bleak messages to convey (I think they just being honest, really) but Sameul Butler is generally credited with creating the idea of "dystopia" (specifically, the opposite of a utopia). Check out his story "Erehwon":
w ho n/
http://www.hoboes.com/html/FireBlade/Butler/Ere
This is, incidentally, the first use of the word Erewhon ("nowhere" spelled backwards) -- a much stolen and uncredited idea ever since.
Spang!
-Dylan
While it's true that DLP systems don't run at some sort of magic uber-resolution, this doesn't sound right to me -- first of all, I remember hearing that the resolution was more like 5,000 pixels on the horizontal and second of all, that doesn't seem like the dimensions of a movie screen.
Where are you getting your information?
Ah!
-Snerdy
E. M. Forrester's (rather bitter) short story "The Machine Stops" has clear descriptions of a device later called "television." The story was written in 1909.
http://www.plexus.org/forster/
Okay!
-Dylan