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The Terminal Experiment Q9: Hobson's Choice?
The book's working title was Hobson's Choice, named after the main character, but also an historic term for when someone is given the appearance of having a choice, when in fact, you have only one option, and that option is not ideal. What are the Hobson's Choices in the book?
Is The Terminal Experiment the better title?
Comments
I hadn't spotted that! Thanks for highlighting it. I guess Sally was in that position?
I thought there was a pun on terminal (interface with a computer), and terminal (end of life). We're now aware of some of the weirder (white, european, industrialised, rich, democratic) ideas related to this, e.g. the singularity. Looking at the ideas here now, it just feels clever in a middle school kind of way, but it's now difficult to remember where we were at back in the 90s. We could go back to the 70s to talk about future shock I guess.
Good observation re: the play on terminal and terminus.
It is difficult to remember the 90's. Watching Prisoners of Gravity is reminding me LOL. We've come quite a long way. In one episode, Rick Green mentions that he and the entire show team are on the GEnie Bulletin Board if anyone wanted to interact with them. And it occurred to me, watching all the interviews - that when these interviews were done, someone actually had to go to the person being interviewed and tape the interview. There was none of this zoom or facetime stuff.
Anyway, I myself was not really sure which specific choice the author was referring to, so I don't have an answer to the question.