. . . muttered the ogre

In Bruce Sterling‘s wonderful novel Schismatrix (1985), the spaceship Red Consensus has an interesting feature:

The control room . . . had been designed by some forgotten industrial theorist who believed that instruments should use acoustic signals. . . . Bizarre at first, the sounds were designed to sink unobtrusively into the backbrain. Any change in the chorus, though, was immediately obvious. Lindsay found the music soothing, a combination of heartbeat and brain.

Now:

the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning has created software that translates network and server activity into music. And, their IT department operators can interpret the music to detect problems in the system.

(Cited by Sore Eyes.)

An acquaintance writes:

Eudora remains my client of choice because

1. I’m used to it
2. My attitude is Augustinian: “Make me a LINUX user, but not quite yet.”
3. I love the splash screen, which looks like an insane mailman manically throwing people’s letters away over his shoulder.