Fiction Writing and Other Oddities

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Bogus News from the Future

My previous blog predicting the course of the publishing industry over the next few years was so successful that I’m adding future predictions to my repertoire of blog topics. In fact, here is my next installment and the first of my Mostly Bogus news from the world of electronics and publishing.



The latest Mostly Bogus News from the Disinformation News Network


Dateline: Jan 11, 2021


HIC Apps


Google and Amazon announced today two new apps for the increasingly popular human identity chips (HIC). As most of our readers know, HIC were invented ten years ago and last year were included in an Identity Assurance law that legislates such chips will be embedded in the forearm of babies shortly after birth, to assist in locating lost or missing children. While such chips have previously been passive devices, the newest generation uses the minute electrical impulses generated by the surrounding muscle tissue to make the chips active. This has allowed small apps to run, including the latest two from industry giants Google and Amazon.


The Google HIC-app, known as G-Loc, will allow parents to view the location of their children on Google maps. This is expected to be a boon for both parents and law enforcement personnel in locating children who may have wandered off or become lost or even kidnapped. However, civil rights activists have already raised alarms about this service, pointing out that the same apps could be used by spouses to track the location of their errant significant others, not to mention the effect this technology may have on the ability of students to evoke their right to play truant. It remains to be seen what limitations lawmakers may set on this new breakthrough technology.


Amazon also announced today that their HIC-app, dubbed KHIC, will allow readers to download e-books to their HIC. These books can then be read via any available display using a Bluetooth technology, including the increasingly popular, new wave reading glasses and contact lenses. This technology frees the reader from carrying any type of e-reader as content is delivered on demand to the HIC and from there can be displayed on any nearby display device.

For those readers who prefer audio books, KHIC will stream the audio version of the book directly to any Bluetooth-equipped hearing aid or headsets. It is reported to work very well with auditory implants surgically implanted to correct deafness, although there are rumors that listening to too many audio books in one sitting may lead to distraction, impatience, and a general inability to listen when other people are talking.


However, since most conversations take place via tweets and instant messaging, this is not seen as a real issue for audiophiles, most of whom scoffed at the notion that their social skills might suffer if they preferred to listen to the voices in their head over those of their significant others. One audiophile was quoted as saying, "What? Wait a minute, this is the really good part..."


Late Breaking Update


Jan 12, 2012 - A wife took an axe to her husband today after discovering him in flagrante delecto with a pair of co-eds claiming to be from the University of Boston. The wife, identified as I. M. Cummins, was a member of the Boston police department and had purportedly been working on a case involving a pair of missing teenaged girls. She was issued a search warrant based upon geographic information obtained through Google’s newest G-Loc app and tracked the girls to room 313 in the local Ho-Down hotel and convention center. Detective Cummins discovered the girls doing unspeakable things to her husband who was inconveniently handcuffed to the bed at the time. His bonds prevented his expeditious escape, allowing his wife time to find the hotel’s fire axe and use it to free her husband from his restraints by relieving him of most of his limbs and head.


The girls returned unharmed and in excellent spirits to their parents.


The hotel maids, however, subsequently filed a complaint concerning their unsavory working conditions due to the occasional unpleasant surprise found in and around the bed in room 313.


More Related News


After a group of innovative students used KHIC to download and view the answers to their final exam in Moral Philosophy at Yale, Amazon is considering the addition of a Professor-Control add-on to KHIC. The add-on will allow teachers and other officials to shut down any KHIC running within 50 yards of their KHIC. Civil Rights groups are monitoring this to ensure it’s not used to prevent readers from accessing and enjoying e-books whenever and wherever they wish, including books previously listed as banned or just plain stupid (JPS).


While the three students involved were expelled from Yale, MIT offered them a scholarship to work on a project involving the development of additional HIC-apps for the Department of Defense. Details concerning such a project, or even confirmation that such a project exists, were unavailable at this time.


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