Word: newness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...computer games, it is clear to anyone who has tried the machines that the most fascinating interaction is between one person and one computer. Computer gaming, and learning, are solitary activities that do not seem solitary. The computer toys are starting to teach their owners not only a new kind of thinking, but what may amount to a strange new way of socializing. Says J. Fred Bucy, president of Texas Instruments, the biggest producer of the silicon chips that are the brains of the little monsters, "I think schoolteachers in the next decade are going to see a new kind...
Mkroviskm. "I have a family and a responsible job. I'm supposed to be intelligent. I'm trying to get an important new project started for my company. So this" -the Manhattan communications executive looked in exasperation at the small plastic box he held in one hand-"is crazy. It just doesn't make any sense that I've spent all morning twiddling this knob." Then his expression changed to a high-voltage gloat: "But look at that score!" The readout on the small, gray, liquid crystal screen said 542, which is middling-titanic for Blockbuster...
...says, "That is correct. Now spell extra." Or, if the speller has made a mistake, the machine says, "Wrong. Try again." The sentences are lifelike, and the pitch of the voice rises and falls in a normal way. Two wrong attempts bring the correct spelling, spoken aloud, and a new word to try. After ten words, another little tune plays, and the machine gives the speller's score, with special congratulations if all ten have been spelled correctly...
There are varying word lists-some repetitions, some new words-at each of four levels of difficulty. In addition, the machine plays word games, and can put messages into code. (It also spells any word aloud, when the proper buttons are pushed, and children discover quickly that when improper buttons are pushed, bad words are spelled. The shock value is considerable when the pleasant mechanical voice pronounces "Eff, You, See ...") Speak & Spell, which sells for $64.95, was dreamed up by a Texas Instruments products engineer named Paul Breedlove, who had worked in voice synthesis and thought that the concept might...
...joint statement, the two leaders said the goal of the talks is nothing less than "re-establishment of full communion" between the world's 700 million Roman Catholics and more than a dozen self-governing branches of Eastern Orthodoxy that together include an estimated 125 million believers. A new spirit of warmth had begun when Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I met in Jerusalem at the Mount of Olives in 1964. Now under their successors, Dimitrios, 65, and John Paul, 59, a second and more difficult phase is beginning...