• memfree@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    9 hours ago

    See the voice-activated ‘joymaker’ from The Age of The Pussyfoot , by Frederik Pohl, 1966: http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1026

    If you can imagine a combination of telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar, reference library, and full-time secretary, you will have sketched some of the functions provided by your joymaker.

    • stelelor@lemmy.ca
      1·
      8 hours ago

      … Pocket bar? Googling it gets me nowhere. Surely he didn’t mean a bar of alcoholic drinks? Maybe a pocket pry bar?

      • memfree@piefed.socialEnglish
        3·
        8 hours ago

        You were right the first time. It dispenses meds, stimulants, intoxicants and so on from reservoirs within it.

        Edit: I misremembered. It doesn’t dispense intoxicants. It merely orders them and has them delivered to you.

        • stelelor@lemmy.ca
          2·
          8 hours ago

          It says a lot about the culture of the 60s and/or Pohl himself, that the first conceivable use for “instant ordering” would be for drugs.