Word: screens
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Today plastic is nearly everywhere, from the fillings in our teeth to the chips in our computers (researchers are developing flexible transistors made of plastic instead of silicon so they can make marvels such as a flat-panel television screen that will roll like a scroll up your living-room wall). Plastic may not be as vilified now as it was in 1967, but it's still a stuff that people love and hate. Every time a grocery clerk asks, "Paper or plastic?," the great debate between old and new, natural and synthetic, biodegradable and not, silently unfolds...
...seventh day, Berners-Lee cobbled together the World Wide Web's first (but not the last) browser, which allowed users anywhere to view his creation on their computer screen. In 1991 the World Wide Web debuted, instantly bringing order and clarity to the chaos that was cyberspace. From that moment on, the Web and the Internet grew as one, often at exponential rates. Within five years, the number of Internet users jumped from 600,000 to 40 million. At one point, it was doubling every 53 days...
...multimedia computers have been getting pretty thin lately. Now NXT has taken this anorexic trend about as far as it can go: to invisible. The company, based in London, has developed a way to make speakers so transparent that they can overlay any flat surface--PC monitor, TV screen, picture frame, even car windshield. A prototype covers a laptop with a vibrating sheet of clear plastic and produces a stereo sound that seems to come right out of the screen. No licensees yet, but with tech this cool, it's only a matter of time...
...this paper, I examine one of Harvard's tiniest but most socially significant genres of literature: the plan file. To those of you unfamiliar with this academic field, please allow me to explain. When someone fingers your account on the Harvard UNIX server, the screen displays the last time and place that you logged on, as well as an optional message--the plan--that greets whoever is fingering you. Most often, these plan files are either blank or filled with a brief witty saying. It's not uncommon, however, to see plan files that push the very envelope...
When executed skillfully, plan files present a snapshot of the author's values and intellectual preoccupations. Some people, however, seem to think that a plan file is the e-mail equivalent of a high school yearbook. They abuse our patience by writing 10-screen long plan files, filled with every obscure reference, movie line and aphorism they've collected over the past year. Such hodgepodge plan files are universally condemned by the critics. If you're about to put down 40 or so witty saying please keep the following maxim mind: Unless you're Voltaire, I really don't care...