Collision Detection

There's a charming book about a long-distance relationship between telegraph operators called Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer. The writing itself isn't anything special, but it is remarkably prescient.

Here's a particularly insightful quotation:

> ... we will soon be able to do everything by electricity; who knows but some genius will invent something for the especial use of lovers? something, for instance, to carry in their pockets, so when they are far away from each other, and pine for a sound of 'that beloved voice,' they will have only to take up this electrical apparatus, put it to their ears, and be happy. Ah! blissful lovers of the future!

Note that this was published in 1879!

http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2013/07/wired_love_a_ta.php [via Boing Boing]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24353

> Human grandmasters don’t work that way. They do not necessarily “see” the game several moves out. Indeed, they can’t — as Kasparov points out, chess is so complex that “a player looking eight moves ahead [faces] as many possible games as there are stars in the galaxy.”... “As for how many moves ahead a grandmaster sees,” as Kasparov concludes, the real answer is: “Just one, the best one.”
http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2010/02/why_cyborgs_are.php

The Gilette Singularity

The interesting curve is the hyperbolic one, for two reasons: One, it matches the
real-world data. And two, it goes to infinity in 2015. And how are you going to
get an asymptotically-accelerating number of blades onto a razor? Why, you’d need
godlike super-technology to do that.

http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2006/06/the_gillette_si.php