A day in the life of a student in the year 2012 A.D.

Abstract

That morning Joe Parkinson woke at seven o’clock; the Song of the “Hypertexas” University was heard in the students’ rooms, distributed by the local millimetric wave network. He switched on his luminescent wall panels which reconstituted natural light, and, wanting a rural atmosphere, chose the “Park” light combination which turned the panels into a perspective of green leaf and flowers pretty well in their natural colors. The only two panels which remained dark were that reserved for telephone communication and that for college instruction, brought round by television. Gathering his spirits, Joe realized he had a slight headache and remembered that a new vaccine had been pricked into him the previous day. The diseases of former times, tuberculosis, polio, and even cancer had been suppressed by preventive vaccines which were compulsorily applied, as was shown on his identity card registered with a series of eleven figures and three letters; a mere look at this arithmetical group gave the complete story of the individual, from his blood group to the results of his vaccinations, his diseases and his operations. In the University’s central register, a punched card in his name, processed by the specialized computers, was to forecast Joe’s behavior in his varying states of health. But from a few months back an unknown virus was playing havoc, especially among young people, in the form of mental troubles which had become the principal plague of Man. The first symptom was an almost complete loss of memory and the new disease was attended by insensitivity to color. These deficiencies had first been attributed to a system of television reception in which the nerves were directly excited by electrodes connected to the receiver and placed on the temples, at points fixed by the electrical topology of the brain: vision by means of panels had thus been done away with, the optic nerves being brought directly into action. This system had had a considerable application but had finally been prohibited. And so students were subjected to special vaccination and Joe directed a This paper is reprinted from the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IRE, vol. 50, no.