"Reinventing Heinlein - again."
Bruce C. Baker
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q4/mail594.html#Tuesday
======================================
Reinventing Heinlein - again.
Jerry
Rigid sky-train to fly through magnetic rings on sticks. The story covers
the sky train as well as highways running hovercraft at 500 mph:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/22/ring_pole_train_psychologists_nightmare/
Hmm. Robert featured exactly both of these in Starman Jones
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416505504> , which is still in print.
Hmm again. I haven't read my copy in a few years. Time to reread it.
Ed
I want my future back. We used to look forward to seeing such things in our
lifetime.
==
djinn
wrote:
> Via Jerry Pournelle
>
> http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q4/mail594.html#Tuesday
>
> ======================================
>
> Reinventing Heinlein - again.
>
> Jerry
>
> Rigid sky-train to fly through magnetic rings on sticks. The story covers
> the sky train as well as highways running hovercraft at 500 mph:
>
>
> Hmm. Robert featured exactly both of these in Starman Jones
> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416505504> , which is still in print.
>
> Hmm again. I haven't read my copy in a few years. Time to reread it.
>
> Ed
>
> I want my future back. We used to look forward to seeing such things in our
> lifetime.
>
djinn
I had a conversation that decided me to follow up on my post.
I just rode an electric scooter over to the light rail station, used a
payment card to get on the train, pulled my telephone out of my
pocket and started to listen to music. Then I flipped up the ebook
reader and started reading. Someone called me so I pushed a button on
my earphones and talked to them.
Right now I'm typing on a computer that is connected to a world
spanning network. The computer can play movies, music, display books
and let me have conversations with people pretty much anywhere. (So
can my phone, for that matter. It sucks to type on though)
The weather forecast called for snow, even though it seemed way too
sunny and warm for it. I'm looking out at the snow now. Weather
forecasting got pretty accurate since the govt figured out how to get
precipitation on demand.
A couple of months ago I rode the 'fast train'. Going south I'd taken
the older train, from here to there in about 14 hours. Coming back
took 7, on a train so smooth I couldn't feel the motion. We went
right thru a thunderstorm, rain and lightning all around, no effect on
the train. I slept in a berth with a little TV at the foot.
I think we're living in the future. We just guessed wrong about which
things we'd have.
Bill Patterson
>
> - Show quoted text -
I remember the very first time I had that feeling -- I was bicycling
up Rural Road between Tempe and Scottsdale, AZ in 1975 and caught
sight of a sign for a home computer store. I had to get off the bike
and just stare at it for five minutes or so.
The radar images of the surface of Venus gave me that sense too.
Front page on a newspaper.
Michael Black
> I remember the very first time I had that feeling -- I was bicycling
> up Rural Road between Tempe and Scottsdale, AZ in 1975 and caught
> sight of a sign for a home computer store. I had to get off the bike
> and just stare at it for five minutes or so.
>
That shock likely reflected the circles you were in.
I knew computer stores were coming, I read about them in the computer
magazines. I'd wanted my own computer from about 1969 (and I can no longer
remember what sort of computer I expected at that point), and when the
Altair 8800 appeared in Popular Electronics it just seemed like an
extension of what we were seeing in the magazines anyway. A nice thing to
see, but not a surprise. Then I had to wait. One store announced a grand
opening, "Compucenter" and I rushed right down only to discover it was a
mostly calculator store. I guess they wanted to reserve the name for the
future, for a long time they sold only calculators and tv games. Finally
in the fall of 1977, the first local computer store opened up here. It
was pretty empty for a long time. And I'd already had a brief article in
one of the computer magazines by the time it had opened.
I knew about Arpanet in 1978, a year before I finally got a computer (not
that that computer could have been used as a terminal). It's only in
retrospect that such knowledge was important, at the time it did not make
much of an impact on me.
Michael
Tian
was enough computerish stuff around that everybody that wanted one had
one. There were still lots of different ideas about what would work.
I remember watching the Atari ST vs. the Comodore Amiga vs. ??????.
I figured the ST would be the category killer and got one and started
a program for it. It wasn't that long before I realized I'd guessed
wrong. That was my first "owie" from the cutting edge of the technology
buzz saw.
--
Tian
http://tian.greens.org
Latest change: Picts from Halloween's critical mass in San Francisco.
Bill Patterson
You're missing the point -- it's the distinction between reading about
somethingcoming to "it's here." The future is here. We'reliving in
the future.
Tian
I got a note from a friend in Kansas. He was bragging about pointing his
telescope at the sky and seeing moons around another planet (Jupiter)
with his own eyes for the first time. This was just a few days ago.
I guess that means telescopes have been getting better to.
djinn
> somethingcoming to "it's here." The future is here. We'reliving in
> the future.
the first time it happened to me was while I was talking on a mobile
phone with a friend. We both heard a big double BOOM, which was odd as
we were probably 30 miiles apart. Turned out to be the Space shuttle
landing. So I was standing in a park talking on the phone with a
friend when a spaceship flew over. that could have come right from a
Heinlein novel.
Michael Stemper
>Bill Patterson wrote:
>> You're missing the point -- it's the distinction between reading about
>> somethingcoming to "it's here." The future is here. We'reliving in
>> the future.
>
>I got a note from a friend in Kansas. He was bragging about pointing his
>telescope at the sky and seeing moons around another planet (Jupiter)
>with his own eyes for the first time. This was just a few days ago.
>I guess that means telescopes have been getting better to.
I got my son a low-end scope for Christmas about a decade back, and
we could see Jupiter's moons through it. It was pretty cool, but I
don't think that your friend's experience is any indicator of technical
progress. Now, if he could see Titania or Oberon, that would be a sign.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
91.2% of all statistics are made up by the person quoting them.
Tian
> In article <hcnem...@enews5.newsguy.com>, Tian <tnha...@aceweb.com> writes:
>> Bill Patterson wrote:
>
>>> You're missing the point -- it's the distinction between reading about
>>> somethingcoming to "it's here." The future is here. We'reliving in
>>> the future.
>> I got a note from a friend in Kansas. He was bragging about pointing his
>> telescope at the sky and seeing moons around another planet (Jupiter)
>> with his own eyes for the first time. This was just a few days ago.
>> I guess that means telescopes have been getting better to.
>
> I got my son a low-end scope for Christmas about a decade back, and
> we could see Jupiter's moons through it. It was pretty cool, but I
> don't think that your friend's experience is any indicator of technical
> progress. Now, if he could see Titania or Oberon, that would be a sign.
>
I guess when it comes to astronomy I'm easily amused. Not to mention
poorly informed. Oh well...
In my junk mail yesterday was a cable ad. It featured a picture of
street signs at the corner of Entertainment and Value. That's a sign,
paid for by corporate america's advertising dollars. I liked it so much
I cut the thing out and taped it on the can of SPAM on my bookshelf.
I think of the whole concept of "entertainment value" as progress.
Used to be, people were interested in more basic stuff, like SPAM's
main ingredients.