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- Frederik Pohl
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| Synapsis-Coils | ||
| Human-like storage for computers. |
Is it possible to mimic human intelligence with computers?
| Within his five synapsis-coils the plans, knowledge, information, blueprints of a whole world existed. In the two centuries he had carefully recreated that world, had made this miniature society that glittered and hummed on all sides of him. The roads, buildings, houses, industries of a dead world, all a fragment of the past, built with his hands, his own metal fingers and brain.
"It occurs to me perhaps there'd be more safety in a squad of troops. It's too much of a temptation for one man, alone." Fowler scowled. "I don't see that. How about me? I have charge of inspecting you. I could switch a few leads around. Send a load through your synapsis-coils. Blow them out." Bors whirled wildly, then subsided. "True. You could do that." After a moment he demanded, "But what would you gain? You know I'm the only one who can keep all this together. I'm the only one who knows how to maintain a planned society, not a disorderly chaos! If it weren't for me, all this would collapse, and you'd have dust and ruins and weeds. The whole outside would come rushing in to take over!" |
| Technovelgy from Last of the Masters,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Orbit Science Fiction in 1954 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the neuristor from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (1966), the neuristor brain from My Name is Legion by Roger Zelazny (1976) and the artificial brain from Edmond Hamilton's 1926 classic The Metal Giants.
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'The actuating mechanism that should have operated by the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell...'
'The only real cost was in the plastic balloon that guided the growth of the coral and enclosed the coral's special air-borne food.'
'The border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
'We made a crude , small cell and were delighted - and, I admit, somewhat surprised - to find it worked.'
'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'The clothes and jewelery drew their tiny power requirements from her movements.'
'At the end of each appendage's eight fingers there are tinier appendages...'
