
The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech (1984) - qwertyuiop924
http://downlode.org/Etext/alicebob.html
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anonred
Those interested in cryptology and coding theory should definitely consider
"The Code Book" by Simon Singh. It's a great account of how cryptology was
used throughout history.

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chillydawg
"The Information" is an excellent book with similar themes.

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cpfohl
Someone want to explain the alphabet joke? "A for 'orse, B for..."

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DanBC
Wikipedia has a nice article, you might need some of the alternatives.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockney_Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockney_Alphabet)

~~~
Someone
Thanks. I didn't recognize it either, but guessed it was Cockney rhyming slang
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang)),
another somewhat similar way to do wordplay in English.

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executesorder66
I find it interesting that exaggerated description of the pocket calculator at
the end sounded a lot like a smart phone. Looks like predictions about future
tech can be accurate after all.

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joelg
I feel like the most accurate predictions start as satire or comedy, not as
serious bets. Satire plays to our gut instinct of what we suspect from the
nature of future, and is shielded from technical criticism, so people feel
more comfortable to take a stab at it without having to hedge.

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oofoe
There was a short story, which appeared in one of the HP calculator-centric
publications of the 70's or 80's, I think written by a certain George R.R.
Martin or Gordon Dickson, which attempted to extrapolate the HP 41CX into a
portable voice activated assistant that could schedule appointments for you. I
remember thinking that was pretty far fetched for a calculator. I don't think
it would have made much more sense if the author had referred to the device as
a "phone"...

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jerf
On the one hand, if you squint, yes, we all have them in our pockets.

On the other hand, I recall a lot of "personal assistant" predictions in which
phones were _personal assistants_ , not just glorified calendars. As in, able
to call the other person and do a live negotiation of times over voice,
possibly with the other person's assistant. We don't have that yet; that turns
out to be harder than we thought. Even the recent trend towards "bots" are
still focusing on people interacting with the bots; nobody's brave enough to
have the bots reaching out to people _other than their customers_ and
interacting with them yet, AFAIK. (Those who seem to use a lot of humans in
the backend.)

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Yhippa
Poor Eve. Always the villain.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
mandatory XKCD reference?

[https://xkcd.com/177/](https://xkcd.com/177/)

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smhenderson
Loved this line, never saw it before.

 _We are told by Suetonius that Julius Caesar communicated with the Orator
Cicero in a cipher in which 'A' was sent as 'B', 'B' as 'C' and so on. If you
apply this cipher to HAL - the computer in the Stanley Kubrick movie: 2001 -
you get IBM._

