Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” that was written in 1950 is set on the day of August 4th, 2026 (tomorrow)!! Now’s your chance to read it around the time it’s based in!
- Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.
- Text: A PDF version.
- Graphic Novel: On Internet Archive.
I used to set this one for second year undergraduate creative writing seminars on writing science fiction on a double bill with Octavia E. Butler's "Bloodchild" and no-one here gets out alive.
!!!! Today is the only chance we’ll ever have to listen to this absolute banger of apocalyptic fiction on the very day the story is set 😲✨
Nemoy’s voice is PERFECT in this!
(A content warning if you do listen - the dog dies, though it’s not super graphic)
I paused the robot vacuum so I could listen to this 1950’s story predicting the robot vacuum.
my most Millennial trait is that i want big screen to think properly. to compose my thoughts. app exists for your thing but no website? bad bad bad not good for think, need big screen for think. i wrote this post on the small screen btw
Apps exist becuae they are governed by different laws than websites. Apps that are 'just a website', are 'just a website that's not legally bound to protect your data'
Also, the minimizing of thought and attention is also intentional. Fewer words to express an opinion, fewer seconds to explain in a video, etc ... leads to poor communication, more followups, more fights, more ENGAGEMENT.
Both of these are ways apps are designed to trap you, and make you create clicks for them, wo they can sell that hard work and you can never fully express yourself and be DONE.
If Orwell had thought of just giving people a little box that wouldn't allow them enough words to express a complete idea, he'd have written it down!
This reminds me of a librarian who realized that only pirates are actually archiving anything now.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. — William Gibson, Neuromancer
Gibson explained in an interview that it goes back further. In his mind, it was a 1950s set, before broadcast began. The silver cathode ray tube TV, still warming up. They didn't display static, and a black and white tube TV would have a sort of dark tarnished silver quality, while it warmed up and displayed nothing.
Even by 1981 that image was dated. Color TVs were normal, and they display a darker black on a 'dead' channel, and most people pictured the bright snow of a color set, not even the silver tone snow of a black and white, and not the the tarnished silver of a classic, tube receiver.
I really don't see how you can possibly make a Neuromancer series in 2026, it's probably the central example of "this is the work which invented every single cliche in its own genre, so a straight adaptation just looks dated as fuck", but I guess I'm interested to see how they try.
I watched the trailer and yeah. The modern cool gritty aesthetic broke forever the second he said "cyberspace".
This is the first I've heard that they're adapting Neuromancer, but I wanted to share my favorite incredibly dated detail from the book. The opening chapters have the protagonist Case on the run and looking to sell stolen RAM chips. Ok, in today's age of Nvidia price gouging that's back in style, but the problem here is William Gibson made the mistake of putting a number on it. Three megabytes. Not terabytes, or even gigabytes, megabytes. Not gonna even pay for a cup of coffee with that, Case.
- "I steal data ... in Cyberspace" ... is not in the book. The writers doing a TV adaptation, in 2026, decided that the audience and Molly are both too stupid to understand what he does without explanation.
- The 3 Megabytes of 'hot' RAM isn't the chips, it's the data they contain. 3 Megabytes could be anything. A secret formula, secret strategy, secret email logs, etc, etc ... 3 Megabytes can be worth anything, if you're thinking about the data. Even when I first read the book, in 1992, I pictured some RAM sticks he'd somehow removed from a device, and was keeping alive with a battery until the buyer came through.
My new setup for community archiving events:
Two keyboards with little screens, on which questions appear. The answers are rendered live as a network on the round screen, shared words forming the knots. The trackball allows for navigation and zooming.
Hardware: Raspberry Pi computers, one running 2 screens.
Software: Markdown files in obsidian.md, and a javascript for the dialogue, then some regular expressions to extract the shared terms.
Love the energy, wish I knew more about it.
Sord M5
ᴅ ᴏ ɴ ᴛ _ ʙ ᴇ _ ᴀ ꜰ ʀ ᴀ ɪ ᴅ .
Update on my 12-key Cyberdeck.
(Mirror Shades for scale)
The LCD Dock is 80% there. This is designed to be entirely modular. I have wearable displays, a little dock that makes it like a laptop, etc ...
I can pull the 'Core Unit' out and put it in something else.
The 12-keys are a 'chord' keyboard. Meaning that you can press more than one key to make a single 'keystroke'. This was based on the Handykey 'Twiddler' layout. This one has layers for mouse, keyboard, games, symbols, etc .. it's a full keyboard, to hold you over until you pull a folding Bluetooth keyboard out, anyway.
I AM THE BEST PIRATE
I just found an archive of EVERY DOS GAME for my new Cyberdeck.
I have graduated from pirate to 'archivist' and I expect to be addressed as such.
*The oligarchy has brought this ill-will and deep suspicion on itself. If they sold jars of mustard it would be "Pervert Mustard"
Just saw a bunch of ICE pics where they're all wearing them ... while wearing masks themselves.
Watch yourself out there!
I'm going to need you all to trust me on this one and watch Teknolust (2002) Featuring bio-geneticist Rosetta Stone (Tilda Swinton) and her three computer clones (Tilda Swintons) that live in her microwave.
OK this looks like an absolute acid trip
Reblogging to remind myself to download this ...