Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

The big excitements for us at Pajaro Sands were the natural attractions that caused it to be built, surf and sand and sunshine.

I enjoyed surfboarding until I became skilled at it. Then it bored me. I usually sunned a bit each day and swam a little and stared out at the big tankers suckling at the oil moles and noted with amusement that the watchstander aboard each ship often was staring back, with binoculars.

There was no reason for any of us to be bored as we had full individual terminal service. People are so used to the computer net today that it is easy to forget what a window to the world it can beÄ and I include myself. One can grow so canalized in using a terminal only in certain waysÄpaying bills, making telephonic calls, listen-

ing to news bulletinsÄthat one can neglect its richer uses. If a subscriber is willing to pay for the service, almost anything can be done at a terminal that can be done out of bed.

Live music? I could punch in a concert going on live in Berkeley this evening, but a concert given ten years ago in London, its conductor long dead, is just as “live,” just as immediate, as any listed on today’s program. Electrons don’t care. Once data of any sort go into the net, time is frozen. All that is necessary is to remember that all the endless riches of the past are available any time you punch for them.

Boss sent me to school at a computer terminal and I had far richer opportunities than any enjoyed by a student at Oxford or the Sorbonne or Heidelberg in any earlier year.

At first it did not seem to me that I was going to school. At breakfast the first day I was told to report to the head librarian. He was a fatherly old dear, Professor Perry, whom I had met first during basic training. He seemed harriedÄunderstandably, as Boss’s library was probably the bulkiest and most complex thing shipped from the Imperium to Pajaro Sands. Professor Perry undoubtedly had weeks of work ahead before everything would be straightened outÄand in the meantime all Boss would expect would be utter perfection. The work was not made easier by Boss’s eccentric insistence on paper books for much of his library rather than cassettes or microfiche or disks.

When I reported to him, Perry looked bothered, then pointed to a console over in one corner. “Miss Friday, why don’t you sit down over there?”

“What am I to do?”

“Eh? That’s hard to say. No doubt we’ll be told. Urn, I’m awfully busy now and terribly understaffed. Why don’t you just get acquainted with the equipment by studying anything you wish?”

There wasn’t anything special about the equipment except that there were extra keys giving direct access to several major libraries such as Harvard’s and the Washington Library of the Atlantic Union and the British Museum without going through a human or network linkupÄplus the unique resource of direct access to Boss’s library, the one right beside me. I could even read his bound paper

books if I wanted to, on my terminal’s screen, turning the pages from th~ keyboard and never taking the volume out of its nitrogen

environment. –

That morning I was speed-searching the index of the Tulane University library (one of the best in the Lone Star Republic), looking for history of Old Vicksburg, when I stumbled onto a cross-reference to spectral types of stars and found myself hooked. I don’t recall why there was such a cross-referral but these do occur for the most unlikely reasons.

I was still reading about the evolution of stars when Professor Perry suggested that we go to lunch.

We did but I made some notes first about types of mathematics I wanted to study. Astrophysics is fascinatingÄbut you have to talk the language.

That afternoon I got back to Old Vicksburg and was footnoted to Show Boat, a musical play concerning that eraÄand then spent the rest of the day looking at and listening to Broadway musical plays from the happy days before the North American Federation fell to pieces. Why can’t they write music like that today? Those people must have had fun! I certainly didÄI played Show Boat, The Student Prince, and My Fair Lady one after the other and noted a dozen more to play later. (This is going to school?)