The Victorian Internet and The Technology of the Discworld OR Geek Out!

If you are one of my Twitter pals, you know that I love tech.  I follow the latest tech news, not as a someone in the field,* but as a lover of history who happens to be the daughter of a Skunk Works engineer (look it up) and a science teacher. These days I do a great deal of my work online so I love tech now as someone who uses lot of it, both to make a living and in my volunteer work. As far as I'm concerned, women invented networking, we just called it something else, and I love what tech allows us all to do on this score.

My husband is a software engineer who works in robotics. Both his parents worked in the space program and he, too, is big reader and a  history buff. We both spent many happy years in the Salt Mines of Silicon Valley, so it was with great glee that we came up with this one:

The Victorian Internet & The Technology of the Discworld

 +++Out Of Cheese Error ???????+++ Redo from Start

“Imagine an almost instantaneous communication system that would allow people and governments all over the world to send and receive messages about politics, war, illness, and family events. The government has tried and failed to control it, and its revolutionary nature is trumpeted loudly by its backers. The Internet? Nope, the humble telegraph fit this bill way back in the 1800s.“ (from The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage.)

Our panelists will discuss clacks and other technology of the Discworld.

Recommended Reading For Fun and Profit: 

 The Technology of the Discworld - webpage

The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage  

 

Victorian Technology: Invention, Innovation, and the Rise of the Machine by Herbert L. Sussman 

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Victoriana: A Comprehensive Guilde To the Design,Customers, and Inventions of the Victorian Era by Nancy Ruhling & John Crosby Freeman

Victorians and the Machine: A Literary Response to Technology by Herbert L. Sussman

Geeks Rule. 

See you there,

Dj

Art: Leggo Hex  Some of my very favorite things are the Discworld Leggo creations of Captain Smogg on Flickr. 

*  I did spend some very happy years working in the field of technology for people with disabilities.  I was privileged to be involved with the US premier of the first laptop for people with visual disabilities. We sold this device to people who worked in the Navy, the IRS and at the NSA back in the day. One of these is now on display in the Smithsonian. If you rent a Robert Redford movie from the 80's called Sneakers, you'll see it.

Geek note: the character uses it wrong - nobody reads an electric piezo braille display that fast and in the way he's doing it.  I blame the tech advisor, not David Strathairn **

** Just between us, I've always had a thing for David Strathairn. He is partly Scottish, so...you know.***

*** Speaking of sexy Scottish people, Mary McDonnell is in this movie, too, as is James Earl Jones (quite the man, ye ken? but not Scottish, as far as I know). You may remember Ms. McDonnell from Dances with Wolves and Battlestar Glactica. (Oh, dear, my geek is really showing now...)