I said I like to take the ideas in the science fiction and take them back to the everyday. There’s something really great about the Introdus using the flesh body as fuel to transform that very body into information. This is how that passage in Diaspora inspired me: it’s the self-powered scanner. You can see why I don’t draw [although I will include some bonus slides with slightly better drawings on them].
You feed your paper into the scanner, which is also a shredder. The paper is shredded and falls through the desk, where it lands in a compost heap, digested by worms. The mulch, you know, does its composting thing, and methane is given off. The methane is burned, and the heat from the flame turns a little turbine which charges a battery, into which is plugged the scanner.
The scanned data goes to the computer as normal, by USB.
This is good so long as you only need to scan whatever you have once.