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"If you turn away from the natural gifts that God has given you, or the universe has given you, you're going to grow old too soon."
- Ray Bradbury

Machine (Thinking Machine)  
  A very early reference to a thinking machine in charge of a planet.  

In this story of a future Earth, humanity had all of its needs met by a device - an intelligent machine.

"You have forgotten your history, and you have forgotten the history of the Machine, humans..."

"On the planet Dwranl, of the star you know as Sirius, a great race lived, and they were not too unlike you humans. ...they attained their goal of the machine that could think. And because it could think, they made several and put them to work, largely on scientific problems, and one of the obvious problems was how to make a better machine which could think.

The machines had logic, and they could think constantly, and because of their construction never forgot anything they thought it well to remember. So the machine which had been set the task of making a better machine advanced slowly, and as it improved itself, it advanced more and more rapidly. The Machine which came to Earth is that machine."

Technovelgy from The Machine, by John W. Campbell.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1935
Additional resources -

Below, see humans gathered to sacrifice to The Machine.


(Sacrificing to The Machine)

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Machine
  More Ideas and Technology by John W. Campbell
  Tech news articles related to The Machine
  Tech news articles related to works by John W. Campbell

Machine (Thinking Machine)-related news articles:
  - SoundCloud's Hound Provides Conversational Interface (Video)

Articles related to Artificial Intelligence
Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
Bespoke Environment Music From AIs
Steve Jobs: 'Capture The Next Aristotle - With AI'
BMind Smart Mirror from Baracoda

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'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'

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