I figured that I'd mention something that I neglected to bring up in class when we were comparing current tech to tech in the book. Another thing we can add to that list is augmented reality (HUDs) in some car windshields and smartphones (Android phones and iPhones). However, that’s not really what I wanted to address.
Kindle was mentioned and I had an interesting set of trivia related to the development of Kindle. I may or may not have worked on the pre-launch/internal tech support team for Kindle. I’m not positive, but I don’t think I can get in into trouble for this… Anyway, it’s not material information, the products have been released, and you can find most of this information via Google or by looking at URLs for Amazon.com hosted Kindle images and whatnot. So, many of the internal code names for Kindle hardware and software are/were based on characters from Diamond Age. I didn’t know this at the time, but after reading Diamond Age the influence is obvious. Fiona was the internal name for Kindle v1 hardware platform (the angular one that lots of people liked but complained about) and Nell is the Kindle 2 hw platform (people like it, unless they just bought the first gen Kindle, and still complain about). I don’t recall exactly, but I’m pretty sure that Hackworth was the codename for a firmware build on Kindle 1.
Yep, you're absolutely right about the code names for the hardware and software being purposely and specifically named after characters in The Diamond Age!
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