I’m fascinated by the ways that recreation and play react to technology changes–but sometimes can drive technological change too.

How to make a whistle

One of the examples of “play” following technology is the tin whistle. I knew the rough idea of how the tin whistle came to be when I identified it as the title for the last book of The Lattice Trilogy. But in order to make sure I was using it appropriately I did a lot of research, including purchasing my own (pictured above). This one has the name of the original inventor on it. Clarke was the first to realize that the industrial revolution happening in England could be applied to musical instruments. Musical instruments had been incredibly expensive or time-consuming to create. Clarke transformed it. Rolled tin, punched with holes, and voila!—he was able to sell his whistles for a penny (which is why they are also called penny whistles). Music became dramatically more accessible at all income levels because of his insight. This revolution was the perfect metaphor for the action in The Tin Whistle.

Babbage’s dancer

Here’s a story where “play” drives technology, and it neatly ties into Semi/Human.

In the late 1700s, John Joseph Merlin opened “Merlin’s Mechanical Museum” in London. It featured mechanical marvels including “automatons” which were basically clockwork machines that mimicked people. One was a silver figure, about twelve inches high. She could bow and move in a way that was very lifelike.

This machine of whimsy entranced an eight-year-old boy named Charles Babbage. In his attempts to recreate the spirit of it, he went on to learn mechanical engineering and eventually created a “difference engine” and plans for an “analytical engine”—the world’s first computers.

As an adult, Babbage found the dancer in an auction house and paid to refurbish her. He displayed it alongside his difference engine, and said that his inspiration for it “began with that moment of seduction in Merlin’s attic, in the ‘irresistible eyes’ of a machine passing for a human for no good reason other than the sheer delight of the illusion itself.”

(And if you’ve read Semi/Human, you know that Babbage’s computer plays an important part!)

I love stories like these and I hope I’m able to capture some of the spirit of them in my books.