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"We are all repositories for genetically-encoded information that we're all spreading back and forth amongst each other, all the time. We're just lousy with information."
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![]() How can poor Mr. Meek, a penny-pinching accountant from Earth who could barely pilot a spaceship and had no idea how to play space polo, win the game?
It turns out that the bugs were pretty good at math:
He bent closer and froze. It was crawling. There was no doubt of that. Crawling with rock-bugs.
Breath whistling between his teeth. Meek ducked his head under the panel. Every wire, every control was oozing bugs!
...“It’s the bugs!’’ Meek whispered to himself, lips scarcely moving. “The bugs have taken over!”
The craft he was riding, he knew, was no longer just a ship, but a collection of rock bugs. Bugs that could work out mathematical equations. And now were playing polo 1
For what was polo, anyhow, except a mathematical equation, a problem of using certain points of force at certain points in space to arrive at a predetermined end? Back on Gus’ rock the bugs had worked as a unit to solve equations . . . and the new hatch in the ship was working as a unit, too, to solve another kind of problem . . . the problem of taking a certain ball to a certain point despite certain variable and random factors in the form of opposing spaceships.
Fans of The Mote in God's Eye will recognize in these intelligent and useful bugs the Watchmaker Moties from the Niven and Pournelle novel of the 1970's. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
Biohybrid Robots Made Of Living And Synthetic Materials
'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'
Poul Anderson's 'Brain Wave'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
AI Note-Taking From Google Meet
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
Qore IcePlates Are Personal Cooling Suits
'... underneath they consisted of networks of cooling tubes against the skin.'
Waymo Cars Shout At Each Other, Autonomously
'My cars talk to one another. I have no doubt about it...'
Seeing Faces On Grains Of Sand (AI Pareidolia)
'... the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell.'
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