Time for a pulp countdown now, and today it's my top 10 digital watches of distinction!
After all, why wear a Rolex nowadays?
At #10: the 1973 Seiko 06LC. This was Seiko's first LCD wristwatch: a field-effect liquid crystal display showed six digits of time continuously - you didn't need to press a button to see it either!
At #9: the 1976 Bulova Computron. The side mounted LED display meant you could sneak a peek at how long your meeting was taking without anyone else noticing. Very chic.
Revolutions come from the most surprising places...
Compact electronic calculators had been around since the mid-1960s, although 'compact' was a relative term. They were serious, expensive tools for business.
So it was quite a breakthrough in 1967 when Texas Instruments presented the Cal-Tech: a prototype battery powered 'pocket' calculator using four integrated circuits. It even printed your results on a strip of paper.
Today in pulp: why didn't the ancient Greeks write science fiction?
That's a good question. No, really. Come this way...
Drama, poetry, rhetoric: the ancient Greeks not only created wonderous art they also thought deeply about how to perfect it. Aristotle's poetics is still a key touchstone for this after two and a half millennia.
The ancient Greeks also excelled at science, mathematics and philosophy, building on Egyptian and Babylonian knowledge. Theoretical and practical enquiry abounded.
Now did I ever tell you why I started this account, some six or so years ago?
Well it's not for the reasons you might think...
In 2013 the company I worked for decided all us old folk needed to 'get with it' and learn about social media. We were all sent on a course where various webheads and marketeers told us what was what.
There were a lot of fixed ideas about what social media was and wasn't, what worked and what didn't. It was part technobabble and part sales talk.
As a veteran of the '90s web I started to smell a bit of 'new paradigm' BS in the air...