Prescription for Chaos (4 page)

Next—
where
to buy it?

If you want a reliable one, stay away from discounters, particularly those with a truck parked near the front door, decorated with an overgrown bedsheet reading:

HANDHELDS!!
TRUCKLOAD
SALE!!!!!!

The truckload lot will almost certainly be from some outfit in bankruptcy, and while the merchandise may be all right when you get it home, what do you do if it isn't?

If you want a good model, try a camera shop, a book store, or, better yet, a camera shop or book store
on a large college campus
. There you can expect to find a merchant with a discriminating—even spoiled—clientele, that will not hesitate to speak up or even boycott him if he doesn't back the product.

This brings us to the heart of the subject.

Which one to buy?

It is here that the worst mistakes can be made—mistakes even worse than paying fifty bucks for an OG-53 Experimental that will give wrong answers if you so much as bump it, and if you send it back to be fixed, they will return it unfixed by barge line. To avoid such things, look over what's available
before
buying.

Most handhelds fall into some special-purpose category, such as:

1) The descendents of the
calculators
of the mid-seventies. These are too well known to need description.

2) Historical Daters—Relatively simple and inexpensive—and said to have served as a training ground for making the more complex types. You punch the buttons and the screen lights up with the outstanding events of that date. Hit 1-4-9-2, and across the screen from right to left goes: "Christopher Columbus discovered America." A cheap dater may do nothing further. The better models have a wide button lettered "MORE." Tap it repeatedly, and you get: "Columbus sailed the Atlantic seeking a westward route to Asia . . . He had, in his first expedition, three ships:
Santa Maria
(100 tons),
Pinta
(50 tons),
Niña
(40 tons) . . . He was backed by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain . . ." The more expensive models go into incredible detail.

—If you buy one of these, watch out for the "bear-trapped" jobs, whose manufacturers smilingly put sixty percent of the machine's capacity into a few standard dates—knowing that those few dates are the ones most of us will try before buying.

There are scientific daters, military daters, religious daters, and so on. The latest is the "PHD" or "Personal History Dater." With this, you feed in the interesting events of the day before you go to sleep. Then later on, you can review your life by date—and so, of course, can anyone else who gets hold of this electronic diary. It's worth the extra money to get the kind that takes a look at your retinal patterns before it will talk.

3) "Pocket Prof" of "2SR" (Special Subject Reference). In a way, these are the most amazing of the handhelds. Take, for instance, the "GenChem I" put out by the most reliable and expensive U. S. maker. This is said to contain the equivalent of all the facts and data in the usual college course in general chemistry. Its main advantage over a textbook consists in its
indexing
. Though you can look up references by getting its index on the screen, there is another way. Tap the "CC" (Chemical Compound) button, then hit, say, H-2-O, and facts about water will be flashed on the screen as long as you care to persist, until every reference, direct and indirect, has been sought out and shown. Tap the "El" (Element) button, then tap C-A, and the same thing will be done for calcium. To find references to reactions or other relationships between calcium and water, tap these two sets of buttons, and also tap "Cnc" (for "connection"). References that concern both water
and
calcium will be flashed on the screen. Few books have an index even remotely as complete, and with the handheld you have only to glance at the screen to see if the reference shown is the one desired. This is an improvement over hunting up, one at a time, a long list of page numbers.

The GenChem I model, incidentally, uses the broad screen with adjustable flash-time, and a hold button, instead of the reel-type screen, across which letters flow from right to left.

These handhelds have made a considerable dent in textbook sales, though as hard-core book-lovers like to point out, very few textbooks have ever been known to fade away at two a. m. the night before the exam, just when someone has unauthorizedly borrowed your recharger.

But, as the handheld enthusiasts ask, how many books can be programmed to give a vocabulary and grammar review in a foreign language, with practically unlimited numbers of questions in randomly varied order, and in whatever form you care to try? There's even one that will speak the words aloud—while research continues on another to independently check the user's pronunciation.

4) Novelty handhelds—These are the recreation and entertainment models, such as chess and checker players, go, bridge, pinochle, and "pocket casino" models. There are "scenic view" and "guided tour" models. And the "Favorite TV" and "Favorite Movie" series. And, of course, the notorious "Pocket Burlesque Theater."

The latest versions of all these use the N-V viewer, unlike the bulky early models with large built-in screens. In the N-V system (the letters stand for "Natural-View"), a separate image is flashed into each eye, each view being separately adjusted to fit the user's vision.

The Scenic View II uses highly sensitive color apparatus, and an enormous repertoire of scenes—making, in effect, a modern compact replacement for the stereoscope.

The Guided Tour models put related scenes together, along with an earphone for the voice that gives the description. An interesting feature is the "branching" of the tours. Suppose a tour of Paris incidentally shows a famous restaurant. Press the appropriate button, and a new guide appears to express appreciation for your interest, and show you through the restaurant in detail. When now and then he asks, "Do you see?" it isn't a rhetorical question, but the sign of another "branch-point", where if you want you can get still more details.

Similar to this in principle, is the new "careers" model, meant to show what a person in any given line of work actually
does
. The first versions, to judge by the groans of the people really doing the kinds of work shown, fall considerably short of realism.

5) The so-called "trade" handheld—such as the Plumber's Helper, the Auto Mechanic, the Carpenter, the Contractor, and so on. These vary widely.

There is, for instance, a shiny model we can call the WidgetMasTer. Suppose you want to learn from this model how to bend a widget, and so tap out B-E-N-D. If you hit two of the jampacked keys at once, a red light flashes and an alarm goes off. This is, as the instructions explain, "for your protection."

After you tap out B-E-N-D, across the screen glides: "REFER TO ITEM REQUIRED."

Anyone used to book indexes will suppose this means to name the
noun
first—that is, "Widget, bend." But, if you tap out W-I-D-G-E-T, the screen replies, "STATE REFERENCE DESIRED."

Apparently, this must be the place to hit B-E-N-D. But then WidgetMasTer unreels: "REFER TO ITEM REQUIRED."

If you move fast enough, you
can
hit W-I-D-G-E-T-B- but then the red light flashes and the alarm hammers. There is no such thing as a "widgetb," and WidgetMasTer knows it.

The only way out of this impasse is to throw WidgetMasTer in the trash can (the preferred solution), or else fight your way through the instruction pamphlet. Eventually you will locate reference to a "GN" key (for "Generic Name") and an "Op" key (for Operation") and an "Sp" key (for "Species") and a "Q" key (for "Query"). It develops that all you have to do is to just press the Q key, and release it, then press the GN key and tap out W-I-D-G-E-T, then press the Sp key and tap our A-L-L, then press the Op key and tap out B-E-N-D, and then press the Q key again, and then, after a brief little two-minute pause while the red light blinks on and off to show how busy WidgetMasTer is, then there slides across the screen: "MAINTAINING PROPER CORRECT ALIGNING GRIP USING SPECIAL TOOL 2WB STEADILY AND FIRMLY APPLY ALTERNATING PRESSURE USING SPECIAL TOOL A1WB. USE RED HEAT TO AVOID DOWLING CORKING AND CHIEFFERING. DO NOT FORCE THE BEND. CAUTION! NEVER HEAT TREATED WIDGETS!!"

Since the first part of this answer is gone from the screen well before the last part appears, you may think at first that that sense of confusion results because you missed something the first time around. All you have to do to check the answer is to go through the procedure again, wait till the red light gets through blinking, then watch closely as the answer glides past.

What, it
still
isn't clear?

The trouble seems to be that WidgetMasTer is, as they say in the handheld trade, "question-progenitive"—for every uncertainty you bring to it, it presents you with at least one new uncertainty. The only known way to get a clear answer out of this oracle is to have no uncertainties to begin with. If you already know the subject backwards and forwards, you can nearly always unravel its answers.

Very different from WidgetMasTer is the "Mechanic's Special." For instance, if you tap out, H-O-W R-E-M-O-V-E S-T-U-C-K N-U-T? the wide screen answers:

EXPERIENCE SHOWS IF YOU HAVE SIX NUTS, FIVE MAY BE EASY; ONE WILL STICK. IF THE BOLT HAS TWISTED OFF, REFER TO BROKEN BOLTS. IF NOT, AND YOU HAVE AN EXTRA NUT, REFER TO NUTSPLITTER. IF NOT, REFER TO HEAT. ALSO REFER TO DIRT, EYES, KNUCKLES, FIRST AID, VICEGRIPS, CHAIN WRENCH, LEVERAGE, IMPACT, BRASS NUTS, INACCESSIBLE, BLOCKED, RUSTED, SEIZED, ROUNDED, SLOW TUNES AND CAN PRAYER HELP?

One Mechanic's Special is worth many WidgetMasTers. But, so far, the trade market has a wider selection of WidgetMasTers.

Of course, whatever you're looking for, the device not only needs to be good in itself. It also has to fit the situation. If, for instance, what you are looking for is a gift for a younger member of the family, considerable thought may be needed.

A checker or chess-playing model, for instance, can often keep a boy happy and out of trouble for upwards of half-an-hour at a time—but be sure to get the kind that can be "backstepped" to show previous moves. Otherwise, there will be howls that the handheld
cheats
. Incidentally, the "Disrupt" button, that knocks a temporary hole in the chess handheld's calculating ability, is not to be sneered at. It gets tedious pushing the "Reset" button to start a new game.

Any game-playing model, of course, may seem "non-educational"; but then, nearly everyone agrees that a dater
is
educational; and do you really want:

"Say, do you know what happened in 1066? . . . No, no.
Everybody
knows
that
. I mean, do you know what
else
happened? You
don't
? You
don't know
? You mean to say
you don't know
? Well—"

Then there is the very educational "Historical Facts" model:

"You've heard of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, haven't you? . . . Okay, quick—What do the 'E' and the 'S' stand for?"

Avoid like poison the "Political Science" jobs. Those so far available obviously were put together either with the kindly help of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, or by charter members of the Death-To-Taxes League.

All these specialized models are, at least comparatively speaking, standard traditional devices. So are the:

6) Pocket computers. Most of us have had some chance recently to find out what can happen when we first design our own programs. The newer handhelds of this type may have a still larger storage capacity, faster speeds, easier programs, newer microtapes with more ingenious prerecorded programs, crystal-needle master programs, new sensing and acting attachments, independent detachables—and with all this extra latitude, it is, of course, possible to get into a worse mess; but, at least, it is still a mess of a familiar kind.

It is the recently marketed "companion computer" or "pocket buddy" model that adds the tricky new dimension to handhelds. With
these
you can lose more than your money and your disposition.

Take, for instance, the "CCI," which is "Mark I" of the new "Constant Companion" series. This device fits in your shirt pocket, has a "receptor"—a kind of little eye on a flexible stalk—that sticks over the pocket's edge—and a grille that "hears" and on occasion "talks."

CCI was introduced at a price of ten thousand, now sells for six thousand five hundred, and, to the non-enthusiast, it is well worth this price
not
to have one. It is rumored that the price will come down further in the near future. The value of not having one seems likely to stay up.

How does CCI work?

There is the first catch.

No explanation of its construction is given, and curious competitors have found that it self-destructs when opened. This means you do not really know its strengths or limitations. It is
rumored
by the salesmen that the device is in contact with a ring of satellites which in turn are in touch with four gigantic interconnected computers.

And what does CCI do? A quote from the brochure will give the idea:

". . . your Constant Companion is at all times on the alert. Beyond the reach of human failings, he (
sic
) never forgets, never falters, and never fails . . . If you have an appointment or a birthday to remember, your personal friend and pocket private secretary will prompt you at the proper time . . . If you wish to review a scene or an event, CCI has it. If you want to reexamine a spoken agreement, test again the nuances of personal expression, your Constant Companion will unfailingly help you . . ."

CCI is a personal portable combination reminder service, bug, and memory. But, how does it work? How, for instance, does the device communicate with the ring of satellites? What if you drive through an underground tunnel, or board a submarine for a submerged cruise? Does CCI somehow stay in contact with the ring of satellites? If not, why don't the instructions warn you? If so, the Defense Department will be interested.

Incidentally, CCI is already reported to be the subject of study by a government "task force" to determine the legal and technological means to, in effect,
subpoena
your "Pocket Pal," in case you ever land in court.