Gadget review in the form of short dystopian scifi
March 13, 2014 8:35 PM Subscribe
Help me find an online review that someone wrote several years ago, reviewing a data-erasing gadget by writing a piece of dystopian fiction in which the user needs to use the device in a hurry.
I think this was on Boing Boing Gadgets, maybe by Joel Johnson, more than two years ago.
What I remember:
The author reviewed a device that could erase an entire hard drive by hitting it with a magnet. The narrator decides it is time to destroy a bunch of hard drives before the roving bands of ... who? I don't remember ... get to the inside of his bunker. The narrator can hear their tools as they try to get in, and remembers a friend mocking the initial purchase of the device. I remember a line like, "Be dead, Barbara. Be dead and asleep." The generator gives out but the momentum of the spinning magnet -- one hopes -- has finished the job on the last hard drive, just as the enemy breaks in. I think the last line is the narrator's wish, "Be enough."
I think this was on Boing Boing Gadgets, maybe by Joel Johnson, more than two years ago.
What I remember:
The author reviewed a device that could erase an entire hard drive by hitting it with a magnet. The narrator decides it is time to destroy a bunch of hard drives before the roving bands of ... who? I don't remember ... get to the inside of his bunker. The narrator can hear their tools as they try to get in, and remembers a friend mocking the initial purchase of the device. I remember a line like, "Be dead, Barbara. Be dead and asleep." The generator gives out but the momentum of the spinning magnet -- one hopes -- has finished the job on the last hard drive, just as the enemy breaks in. I think the last line is the narrator's wish, "Be enough."
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posted by dhartung at 10:56 PM on March 13, 2014 [1 favorite]