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AudibleNod t1_j56lhqy wrote

Reply to comment by thirdeyefish in TIL The famous "rods from god" concept of a space-based weapons system of orbiting tungsten rods was developed by science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle. by BitterFuture

MP3s can trace it's lineage to Star Trek TNG when Data is asking the computer to play music.

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Xszit t1_j56mg2s wrote

Interesting you'd go with the example of digital music when there's other more glaringly obvious things like the original series communicators inspiring flip phones, or those data pads they use instead of paper for reports inspiring tablets and e-readers, or even the replicator inspiring 3d printing.

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AudibleNod t1_j56nzs6 wrote

Yeah. I saw an interview with Karlheinz Brandenburg, inventor of the MP3 format, explicitly say Data calling up music as inspiration.

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Xszit t1_j56peqd wrote

Thats even more interesting because mp3 wasn't the first digital music, it just had better file compression than previous formats so it made portable digital music players and sharing files over the internet more feasible.

I would have thought the creator was inspired by previous portable music inventions like radios, cassette players, cd players, etc...

weird that he would say the idea came from watching star trek and not from just looking around at the already existing technologies of digital music and portable music and saying "these could go together if I could just make the file sizes smaller"

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