'I believe that literature is a living entity – that books take on a certain life when we hold them in our hands...'

Chitra Banerjee @ MCC | A Report

The Ninth Edition of the T. G. Narayanan Endowment Lecture was delivered by renowned Novelist, Poet and Philanthropist Dr. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, at 9 am today.

The Endowment Lecture was arranged on the ZOOM Platform, [and streamed LIVE on YouTube today] from 9 am onwards.

Although every aspect of the Event was noteworthy, and so meticulously done, one singular aspect of the Endowment Lecture endeared itself so much to all the participants.

And that was - Time management!

So happy to note that, almost everyone who spoke stuck to time!

Short, succinct and to the point!

None was made to wait!

No glaring pauses!

No embarrassing waits!

No awkward silences!

No tedious ramblings!

Not a dull moment for anyone at any point of time during the entire duration of the programme!

There was a beautiful harmony and a balance to the entire event!

Pre-Talk Protocol – 20 minutes

Endowment Talk – 40 minutes + 27 minutes (Q&A)

Vote of Thanks – 6 minutes

Dr. Chitra Divakaruni Banerjee also, for her part, started off quite gracefully, on a warm and cordial note by saying, I’m going to try and make this talk fun and enjoyable, and meaningful’.

True to her words, it was such a delightful, inspiring and impactful session for all of us!

Dr. Chitra spoke on the topic, ‘Bridging Barriers through Literary Texts’.

The Endowment Lecture drew enthusiastic participants from across the world.

Dr. Chitra started by giving out a good news from her publishers - Harper Collins – that her latest novel The Last Queen, [that was released just a few days ago] has been the Number One Fiction title – the Number One Best seller in Crossword Books all across India.

‘A book release during the pandemic is very different and very difficult, because I can’t be there in person to talk to anyone’, said Dr. Chitra Banerjee, and added, ‘I was remembering that wonderful occasion at the Jaipur Literary Fest that you heard about, and of course this is very different’, she quipped.

Excerpts from her Lecture for us all -

‘I will talk today not only about The Last Queen but also of several other books, and some of the life lessons that I try to bring out from them, and how can we bridge barriers and cross boundaries through literary texts and the characters in them’.

‘One more piece of exciting news that I wanted to share is that, The Last Queen has already been optioned for a movie which I’m amazed by, and thankful to God’.

‘I appreciate the Principal telling me about Writer’s Café’.

‘I think in my all these years of living, I can’t think of anything that is more joyful and that I feel is more important than the writing I do’.

‘The writing and the teaching – both of these are more important to me’.

‘The writing – it seems like a gift, and I feel it comes from a divine source, and I wish that same feeling for all of you, and I wish much success as you go on to write about your own ideas, your experiences in the world, because our writing touches people more than we can imagine. Sometimes it touches people in ways that we cannot even think of’.

‘I’ve certainly been touched by other people’s writing and I hope that my writing in some way, has touched people’s hearts’.

‘It is very important of course to study literature academically as we do in English departments, at MCC, and also at my University, the University of Houston, and it is wonderful to criticize the texts and to analyse the texts, and to find hidden meanings, but that is only one segment of the power of literature’.

‘But literature’s power is much more. I believe that literature is a living entity – that books take on a certain life when we hold them in our hands or on our kindles, however we like to read!’.

‘But the magic that occurs when we are alone with a book and its characters is something special. It is a special kind of experience’.

‘I think one of the reasons books and literature are so important, is because of the ways in which it can touch us and change us is that, when we come to a book, we are not defensive….’

To be continued…

Break-up of the time-line -

Introduction & Invocation – 4 minutes

Welcome Address – 3 minutes

Principal’s Address – 4 minutes

About the Lecture – 3 minutes – Dr. Ranganarayanan

Intro of Chief Guest – 4 minutes

Inviting the chief guest for the lecture – 2 minutes

Endowment Talk – 40 minutes

Prize winners of Essay competition – 1 minute

Summing up - 2 minutes

Q & A = 27 min

Vote of Thanks – 6 minutes

The Research Department of English, Madras Christian College (Autonomous), Chennai, is grateful to Dr. Ranganarayanan, for having instituted this Endowment in memory of his father.

All credit to Dr. Mekala Rajan, our vibrant Head of the Department and all our cheerful, dynamic friends in the Research Department of English for having made this event a great, grand success.

PS: You may want to read the Report on the very First Edition of the T. G. Narayanan Endowment Lecture HERE on our blog.

Warmly Inviting You ...

 

The YouTube link for the Lecture - 

https://youtube.com/channel/UC22m2drlu4CDbVnkjYavMtQ

Poem on 'Postcolonialism'

Postcolonialism is like an endless poem

And though “post” is meant to indicate “what happened after”

The field of study is about colonialism as well –

About imperial authority and about “knowledge” that makes for “power”.

So while it interrogates “colonization”,

Postcolonialism celebrates resistance.

Acknowledges hybridity,

Examines historiography,

Decentres imperialism,

Foregrounds “difference”,

Decolonises discourse,

Walks hand in hand with Poststructuralism and Postmodernism,

Empowers the “other” who is on the margins,

Makes SILENCE and ABSENCE a PRESENCE,

Vows to dismantle racism, patriarchy and the parochial,

Doesn’t succumb to the creation of binaries –

Black and white, settler and native,

Centre and margin, “Euro” and “ethno”,

Master and slave, man and woman,

Postcolonialism

Navigates discourse by signposts like

Hegemony, Subalternity, Abrogation and Appropriation.

Truly pluralistic, with its emphasis on “Literatures”, “Feminisms” and “Englishes”,

Postcolonialism is in essence

A liberating intellectual engagement.

- Dr. Preethi

“I suppose that Abe is still fooling hisself with eddication... if Abe don’t fool away all his time on his books, he may make something yet..."

My Earliest Tryst with the Art of Reading! | Asimov

Almost every awe-inspiring autobiographer or memoirist has one beautiful quality that they so gently and beautifully pass it on through their pages quite carefully onto their readers – on how they’d extolled and celebrated that one beautiful skill that they’d acquired quite early on in their blessed lives – their very first tryst with their Reading!

While some of them acknowledge the influence of their teachers in moulding their reading skills, some others vouch with gratitude to the great influence of their mother or their father in developing their reading skills, while some others, although they had had parents who discouraged their reading, still have had the guts and the resolve to persevere hard enough and make it big in life – sometimes as big as the President of the USA even!

One mighty reason why inspiring autobiographies usually devote a major chunk of a chapter to describe with delight their debut date with their reading, and with such exceeding passion and verve!

An apt example to this credo would be Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life, where she narrates her very first, hands on experience with reading!

Here goes Helen –

‘The next important step in my education was learning to read,’ says Helen.

‘As soon as I could spell a few words my teacher gave me slips of cardboard on which were printed words in raised letters. I quickly learned that each printed word stood for an object, an act, or a quality’.

‘I had a frame in which I could arrange the words in little sentences; but before I ever put sentences in the frame I used to make them in objects. I found the slips of paper which represented, for example, “doll,” “is,” “on,” “bed” and placed each name on its object; then I put my doll on the bed with the words is, on, bed arranged beside the doll, thus making a sentence of the words, and at the same time carrying out the idea of the sentence with the things themselves’.

‘One day, Miss Sullivan tells me, I pinned the word girl on my pinafore and stood in the wardrobe. On the shelf I arranged the words, is, in, wardrobe. Nothing delighted me so much as this game. My teacher and I played it for hours at a time. Often everything in the room was arranged in object sentences’.

‘From the printed slip it was but a step to the printed book. I took my “Reader for Beginners” and hunted for the words I knew; when I found them my joy was like that of a game of hide-and-seek’.

Similar is the beautiful example of Booker T Washington’s earliest ever tryst with reading!

Says Washington, Booker T Washington in his autobiography titled, Up From Slavery -

‘From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read’.

‘I determined, when quite a small child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life, I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common books and newspapers. Soon after we got settled in some manner in our new cabin in West Virginia, I induced my mother to get hold of a book for me. How or where she got it I do not know, but in some way she procured an old copy of Webster's “blue-back” spelling-book, which contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as “ab,” “ba,” “ca,” “da.” I began at once to devour this book, and I think that it was the first one I ever had in my hands’.

‘I had learned from somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet, so I tried in all the ways I could think of to learn it, — all of course without a teacher, for I could find no one to teach me. At that time there was not a single member of my race anywhere near us who could read, and I was too timid to approach any of the white people’.

‘In some way, within a few weeks, I mastered the greater portion of the alphabet. In all my efforts to learn to read my mother shared fully my ambition, and sympathized with me and aided me in every way that she could’.

‘Though she was totally ignorant, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large fund of good, hard, common sense, which seemed to enable her to meet and master every situation. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother’,

says Booker T Washington with such gratefulness on him!

To the self-educated Abraham Lincoln, who was born in a log cabin, who then rose on to become the 16^th President of the US, it was a great ordeal to even read! Well, that was because of his father Thomas, who couldn’t value the enormous powers contained within the art of reading!

In the huge, multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln titled, Abraham Lincoln – A Life (Vol.1), Burlingame offers narrates Abe’s initiation into reading, which was, to say the least, a baptism of fire!

Says Lincoln’s biographer –

‘Lincoln’s father regarded physical strength as sufficient to make a manly man and thought time spent on schooling was wasted. He would “slash” Abe for neglecting his work by reading’.

‘Sometimes he even threw out the boy’s books. Five years after Lincoln, at the age of 22, left his father’s home, Thomas Lincoln scoffed’ -

“I suppose that Abe is still fooling hisself with eddication. I tried to stop it, but he had got that fool idea in his head, and it can’t be got out. Now I hain’t got no eddication, but I get along far better than ef I had”.

‘Thomas then showed how he kept his accounts by marking a rafter with a piece of coal and proudly declared’ -  

“that thar’s a heap better’n yer eddication”.

‘He added that, “if Abe don’t fool away all his time on his books, he may make something yet.”’

Well, almost on a similar vein is Isaac Asimov’s earliest appointment with his reading endeavours!

Says Asimov -

‘I learned to read before I went to school. Spurred on by my realization that my parents could not yet read English, I took to asking the older children on the block to teach me the alphabet and how each letter sounded. I then began to sound out all the words I could find on signs and elsewhere and in that way I learned to read with a minimum of outside help’.

‘When he found out I could read, [my father bought] me a small dictionary, “so you can look up words and know how to spell them.’”

‘My first thought was that it was surely impossible to find some one word among all the incredible number, but after I studied the book for a while, the workings of “alphabetical order” became plain and I asked my father if that was how the words were arranged. My father had clearly held back the information to see if I could work it out for myself, and was terribly pleased’.

‘[All this] gave my father the idea that there was something strange and remarkable about me. Many years later, he looked through one of my books and said, “How did you learn all this, Isaac?’”

“From you, Pappa,” I said.

“From me? I don't know any of this.”

“You didn't have to, Pappa,” I said.

“You valued learning and you taught me to value it. Once I learned to value it, the rest came without trouble”.

Asimov’s life story continues…

all images are from amazondotcom

'I felt Heaven to be the act of writing, and I have been in Heaven for over half a century and I have always known this...'

Isaac Asimov | It’s Been a Good Life – 2

To make memories into a meaningful memoir or rather a mesmerising memoir is a feat!

A laudable feat at that!

And Asimov does that with aplomb!

An inspirational read like Benjamin Franklin’s, this autobiography could surely be classed as one of its kind, and made a governing rubric for other potential autobiographers to emulate!

Autobiographies reveal the personal and the private side of a person that they’ve so carefully preserved and guarded from the public eye! As such, they offer the reader a beautiful peek into ‘how’ they lived their life, tackled the challenges, handled the pressures, received their quotas of fame and shame, adventures and mishaps, and what ‘life’ had taught them – all of them in a graded, coherent and chronological fashion.

Asimov’s Autobiography titled, It’s Been a Good Life begins in like fashion, starting off with a lovely prologue that I found so inspiring and endearing!

Hence tempted to cite a line… nay two, from off this lovely little prologue for us all –

Human life is, or should be, an adventure in self-discovery, learning what talents one has and using them successfully. Isaac Asimov knew he'd had this adventure to the fullest and, at the end, said "It's been a good life.

No one but Isaac could tell the genuine story of that good life.

Fortunately, he did-in short pieces, letters, and three large, detailed volumes of autobiography.

it says!

Acknowledging his love for the English language, which he prefers twice over, to Russian or Yiddish, Asimov says,

My father was fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian. My mother was literate and could read and write both Russian and Yiddish. It would have been good to know the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Doestoevski. [But] allow me my prejudice: surely there is no language more majestic than that of Shakespeare, Milton, and the King James Bible, and if I am to have one language I know as only a native can know it, I consider myself unbelievably fortunate that it is English!

Asimov then moves on to describe his first brush with science fiction magazines at his all-time favourite candy store!

No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it.... No "Depression baby" can ever be a yuppie. We were poor, but we always had enough to put food on the table and to pay the rent. Never were we threatened by hunger and eviction. And why? The candy store. It brought in enough to support us, 

says Asimov!

He then gives us his own sweet reasons for choosing science fiction as his favourite medium –

Says he –

The science-fiction magazines were the first pulp magazines I was allowed to read. That may have been part of the reason that, when the time came for me to be a writer, it was science-fiction that I chose as my medium.

Another reason was science fiction's more extended grasp on the young imagination. It was science fiction that introduced one to the universe, in particular to the solar system and the planets. Even if I had already come across them in my reading of science books, it was science fiction that fixed them in my mind, dramatically and forever ...

Interestingly, his father’s presence is palpable all through the book for all good reasons!

How much the role of the parents in nurturing and fostering their child’s prowess!

In chapter Three for the first time, we see his doting father giving him his first words of advice – on not mixing with the bums of his locality!

Says his dad –

"Remember, Isaac," he would say, "if you hang around with bums, don't think for a minute you will make a good person out of the bum. No! That bum will make a bum out of you."

Describing his solitary, day-dreaming, care-free walks in Brooklyn, and his ecstatic, happy and peaceful moments with books, Asimov says,

To those who are not bookworms, it must be a curious thought that someone would read and read, letting life with all its glory pass by unnoticed, wasting the carefree days of youth, missing the wonderful interplay of muscle and sinew. There must seem something sad and even tragic about it, and one might wonder what impels a youngster to do it.

Let me tell you, if you don't know it from your own experience, that reading a good book, losing yourself in the interest of words and thoughts, is for some people (me, for instance) an incredible intensity of happiness.

If I want to recall peace, serenity, pleasure, I think of myself on those lazy summer afternoons, with my chair tipped back against the wall outside the candy store], the book on my lap, and the pages softly turning.

On having been non-religious all through his life, he has a sweet answer that offends none!

Says Asimov, Isaac Asimov,

I am sometimes suspected of being nonreligious as an act of rebellion against Orthodox parents; but I have rebelled against nothing. I have been left free and I have loved the freedom.

I have never, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so.

Have I told you that I prefer "rationalism" to "atheism"? The word "atheist," meaning "no God," is negative and defeatist. It says what you don't believe and puts you in an eternal position of defense. "Rationalism" on the other hand states what you DO believe; that is, that which can be understood in the light of reason.

The question of God and other mystical objects-of-faith are outside reason and therefore play no part in rationalism and you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending that which you rule out of your philosophy altogether.

I was just visualising the possible impish smile he musta sported on his face, when he wrote down the following lines on the concept of Heaven! ;-)

And it is quite interesting to note that Asimov presents even his dislikes, disapprovals and aversions in such a genial, graceful and gentle manner, with an equally humorous style, which I personally feel is a rarity amongst writers of his stature!

Says Asimov -

Imagination was stretched to conceive of the final resting place of evil people or of anyone, however good, who didn't subscribe to quite the same mumbo jumbo that the imaginer did. This gave us our modern notion of Hell as a place of eternal punishment of the most vicious kind. This is the drooling dream of a sadist grafted onto a God who is proclaimed to be all-merciful and all-good.

Imagination has never managed to build up a serviceable Heaven, however. The Islamic Heaven has its houris, ever available and ever virginal, so that it becomes an eternal pleasure house. The Norse Heaven has its heroes feasting at Valhalla and fighting each other between feasts, so that it becomes an eternal restaurant and battlefield. And our own Heaven is usually pictured as a place where everyone has wings and plunks a harp in order to sing unending hymns of praise to God.

What human being with a modicum of intelligence could stand any of such Heavens, or the others that people have invented, for very long? Where is there a Heaven with the opportunity for reading, for writing, for exploring, for interesting conversation, for scientific investigation? I never heard of one.

If you read John Milton's Paradise Lost you will find that his Heaven is described as an eternal sing-along of praise to God. It is no wonder that one third of the angels rebelled.

When they were cast down into Hell, they then engaged in intellectual exercises (read the poem if you don't believe me) and I believe that, Hell or not, they were better off. When I read it. I sympathized strongly with Milton's Satan and considered him the hero of the epic, whether Milton intended that or not.

[Recently] I dreamed I had died and gone to Heaven. I looked about and knew where I was - green fields, fleecy clouds, perfumed air, and the distant, ravishing sound of the heavenly choir. And there was the recording angel smiling broadly at me in greeting.

I said, in wonder, "Is this Heaven?"

The recording angel said, "It is."

I said (and on waking and remembering, I was proud of my integrity), "But there must be some mistake. I don't belong here. I'm an atheist."

"No mistake," said the recording angel.

"But as an atheist how can I qualify?"

The recording angel said sternly, "We decide who qualifies. Not you”.

"I see," I said. I looked about, pondered for a moment, then turned to the recording angel and asked, "Is there a typewriter here that I can use?"

The significance of the dream was clear to me.

I felt Heaven to be the act of writing, and I have been in Heaven for over half a century and I have always known this.

I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

I would also want a God who would not allow a Hell. Infinite torture can only be a punishment for infinite evil, and I don't believe that infinite evil can be said to exist even in the case of Hitler. Besides, if most human governments are civilized enough to try to eliminate torture and outlaw cruel and unusual punishments, can we expect anything less of an all-merciful God?

I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.

Says Asimov, Isaac Asimov!

Speaks volumes to the perceptions and impressions of heaven and hell – to each their aura! To each their charm!

And herein ends chapter four to his autobiography titled, It’s Been a Good Life!

And yes...! our journey with Asimov continues… 

images: fsdotblog, amazondotcom

The ‘Greatest Explainer of his Age’...

Asimov | It’s Been a Good Life!

I prefer coffee to tea! 😍

Nonfiction to fiction! 😍

They’re as different as chalk and cheese! Ain’t they?

One reason I find autobiographies and memoirs so invigorating, inspiring and energizing!

[On an aside, let me also adjoin an added info: Well, we’ve also curated a list of world-famous autobiographies and memoirs to the right of our blog, and it’s there for almost a year now! You may want to have a look at them to your right!]

On this vein, Isaac Asimov, me thought would merit inaugurating the New Year on a positive high for all of us!

Asimov, as we all know, has been called one of the “Big Three” science fiction writers of all time!

His range and his sweep are indeed astonishing and awe-inspiring! More than 500 gripping science fiction and nonfiction books along with a huge ‘three-volume’ autobiography.

Thanks to Asimov's wife, Janet, these ‘three volumes’ of his huge autobiography have been condensed into one for us all!

The very title of his Autobiography in itself exudes enthusiasm to the core!

Titled, It’s Been a Good Life!

Reminded much of Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’, where, after a tiring, arduous ‘journey’, after a ‘cold coming’, ‘worst timing’, ‘sharp weather’, ‘dead of winter’, ‘deep ways’, and ‘melting snows’, times of regret and dreams of sherbet, they finally meet up with ‘dawn’, where they find the place quite ‘satisfactory’!

This cheerfulness and liveliness are at the very heart of his work!

He is not one who looks at the dull, duller facets there is to one’s life!

Rather, he always looks at the bright, brighter aspects there is to one’s life and living!

It’s Been a Good Life is apt example to this, his credo!

And it’s been ‘a good life’, mostly because Asimov, Isaac Asimov, believed in the credentials of humanism, than being bogged down as a religious nut or a religious freak!

No wonder then that the American Humanist Association had named Dr. Asimov the Humanist of the Year.

In his famous 1988 interview with Moyers, Bill Moyers, Isaac Asimov bares his heart out on this, and on many of such principles that are quite close to his heart!

Well, Asimov has been called the ‘greatest explainer of his age’! With such simple words, in such a down-to-earth prose, with no pompous verbosity of any sort, anywhere on his words! And this interview with Bill is ample testament to this fact!

[The interview is here on Bill’s website along with the video as well!]

Bill opens his interview with Asimov on a very interesting note –

Moyers asks him,

“Are you an enemy of religion?”

Asimov replies,

No, I’m not. I feel that, as it seems to me any civilized humane person should feel is that every person has the right to his own beliefs and his own securities and his own likings. What I’m against is attempting to place a person’s belief system onto the nation or the world generally.

You know, we object because we say constantly that the Soviet Union is trying to dominate the world, communize the world.

Well, you know, the United States, I hope, is trying to democratize the world. But I certainly would be very much against trying to Christianize the world, or to Islamize it, or to Judaize it, or anything of the sort.

And my objection to fundamentalism is not that they are fundamentalists, but that essentially they want me to be a fundamentalist, too.

And his takes on religion are so beautifully laid out as well! Says he -

I would like to think — I don’t believe that I’m ever going to heaven or hell. I think that when I die there will be nothingness. That’s what I firmly believe.

That does not mean that I have the impulse to go out and rob and steal and rape and everything else, because I don’t fear punishment.

For one thing, I fear worldly punishment. And for a second thing, I fear the punishment of my own conscience. I have a conscience. It doesn’t depend on religion. And I think it’s so with other people, too.

Besides, even in societies in which religion is very powerful, there’s no shortage of crime and sin and misery and terrible things happening, despite heaven and hell.

I mean, I imagine if you go down death row, bunch of murderers maybe are waiting for execution, ask them if they believe in God. They’ll tell you yes.

Moyers asks, “Why did you say that the price of survival is the equality of women?”

Asimov replies,

Because if women have full ability to enter into all facets of the human condition, if they can enter business, if they can enter religion, science, government, on an equal basis with men, they will be so busy that they won’t feel it as necessary to have a great many children.

As long as you have women under conditions where they don’t feel any sense of value, no self-worth except as mothers, except as baby factories, they’ll have a lot of children.

Because that’s the only way they can prove they’re worth something.

In general, if you look through the world, the lower the status of women, the higher the birth rate.

And the higher the birth rate, the lower the status of women.

So that if you could somehow raise the status of women, I am certain the birth rate will fall drastically through the choice of the women themselves.

Moyers asks,

When I learn something new — and it happens every day — I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest. I’m afraid that by the time I begin to feel really at home, it’ll all be over.

Asimov replies,

I used to worry about that. I said, “I’m gradually managing to cram more and more things into my mind. I’ve got this beautiful mind, and it’s going to die, and it’ll all be gone.”

And then I thought, No, not in my case. Every idea I’ve ever had I’ve written down, and it’s all there on paper. I won’t be gone. It’ll be there.

Today, what people call learning is forced on you. Everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class.

But everyone is different. For some, class goes too fast, for some too slow, for some in the wrong direction.

But give everyone a chance, in addition to school, to follow up their own bent from the start, to find out about whatever they’re interested in by looking it up in their own homes, at their own speed, in their own time, and everyone will enjoy learning.

And yes!

With what beautiful foresight, Isaac Asimov the scientific seer has predicted the ‘teaching machine’ far far ahead of today’s virtual learning that’s happening all around the world –

An intrigued Moyers asks Asimov, “What would a teaching machine look like?”

Asimov replies,

I suppose that one essential thing would be a screen on which you could display things… And you’ll have to have a keyboard on which you ask your questions, although ideally I could like to see one that could be activated by voice.

You could actually talk to it, and perhaps it could talk to you too, and say,

“I have something here that may interest you. Would you like to have me print it out for you?”

And you’d say, “Well, what is it exactly?” And it would tell you, and you might say, “Oh all right, I’ll take a look at it.”

At a period in time, when Artificial Intelligence was literally unheard of by the lay, here’s a gentleman trying to see(r) into the future with such marvelous accuracy!

Equally reminded of Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition and Bill Gates’s Business @ the Speed of Thought!

Asimov to continue… 

[image screenshot from Bill's website - billmoyersdotcom]