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"The only real way to maintain privacy is to be uninteresting. It may be that privacy is a passing fad."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Self-Sufficient House | ||
| A single family residence that required no surrounding infrastructure. |
The idea that Clarke is getting at is a house that does not require anything from its surroundings in the form of infrastructure; no roads, no power lines, no nothing.
| Most people had two homes, in widely separated parts of the world. Now that the polar regions had been opened up, a considerable fraction of the human race oscillated from Arctic to Antarctic at six-monthly intervals, seeking the long, nightless polar summer. Others had gone into the deserts, up the mountains, or even into the sea. There was nowhere on the planet where science and technology could not provide one with a comfortable home... |
| Technovelgy from Childhood's End,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Not Known in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Here's another bit:
Compare to the solar-powered prefab house from Ring Around the Sun, by Clifford Simak, published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1952.
Some of the more eccentric dwelling places provided the few items of excitement in the news. In the most perfectly ordered society, there will always be accidents. Perhaps it was a good sign that people felt it worthwhile to risk, and occasionally break, their necks for the sake of a cozy villa tucked under the summit of Everest, or looking out through the spray of Victoria Falls.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Childhood's End
More Ideas
and Technology by Arthur C. Clarke
Tech news articles related to Childhood's End
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur C. Clarke
Self-Sufficient House-related
news articles:
- Instant Housing
- EDV-01 Instant Self-Sufficient House
- Elegant Bivouac Shelter Produces Water And Electricity
| Amazon Will Send You Heinlein's Knockdown Cabin |
| Elegant Bivouac Shelter Produces Water And Electricity |
| AI-THu Shapeshifting Transformer Home |
| With Mycotecture, We'll Just Grow The Space Habitats We Need |
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'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.'
'... folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy.'
'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
