Peak "Mistress"

You may have noticed I have been a bit busy for much posting this last few days.

But, while you miss me, I trust you haven't missed this startlingly clear computer generated head:



This reminds me very much of Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", in which the revolution's "leader" is a talking head generated by the moon colony's gigantic computer, which still has to stop doing other things to concentrate on the graphics.

Isn't it weird the unexpected ways technology evolves?    Just as with Heinlein's use of slide rules on spaceships, the idea that you would have an advanced lunar colony run by a computer which has gained consciousness but can barely cope with realistic graphics illustrates what a tough job it is for science fiction to be correct in the details.   (And another great example of anachronistic technology being used alongside futuristic stuff we are miles away from realising: the way the characters in Mote in God's Eye are using what we now take as routine - tablet like devices connected by wireless to the ship's mainframe - when they are on an interstellar planet.  Mind you, Pournelle has also been keen in his other science fiction on implants which allow direct communication with a computer, but as far as I know, there is still no idea at all about how you would do the neural connections for that to work. Well, OK, I guess cochlear implants give us some idea, but I still wonder whether this is a science fiction idea too far to ever be practical.)