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Soon, Your Tesla Will Follow You Like A Pet
Tesla founder Elon Musk has sent another majestic tweet to eager users of Tesla Motor Cars.
Car will drive to your phone location & follow you like a pet if you hold down summon button on Tesla app
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2018
(Tweet from Elon Musk on new Summon feature)
According to the inimitable Musk, the feature will be ready in "~6 weeks", which in Elon Time (tm) means, well, anytime from Christmas through Easter.
Science fiction authors were ready to do something similar decades ago, of course. Philip K. Dick described homotropic devices that sought out people and followed them around in his 1963 novel The Game Players of Titan. In 1963, in Lies, Inc., Dick described the creditor jet balloon, which was capable of "personally hounding" an individual deadbeat consumer.
However, I was thinking of John Brunner's idea from his 1975 blockbuster The Shockwave Rider
From now until his credit expired the machine would carry his bag in its soft plastic jaws and follow him as faithfully as a well-trained hound...
(Read more about the auto porter)
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Science Fiction
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Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Ideas
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'Whisper Mode' ala Blue Thunder Researched At Bristol
'Forest Lawn.'
Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
'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?'
Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
Splendid View Of Eclipse From Orbit Visualized And Repurposed By Arthur C. Clarke
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
Bespoke Environment Music From AIs
'Call 'em Winter Mute," said the other, making it two words.'
Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
Elon Musk Says Robotaxis Will Be Ready This August, 2024
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Moonwalkers AI-Controlled Electric Shoes
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
Steve Jobs: 'Capture The Next Aristotle - With AI'
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
No Tips! Robotic Food Delivery In Phoenix
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
Electric Catamaran 'Explorer Eco 40m' Has 'Solar Skin'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
Orbital Mechanics, The Liftoff, The Turnover, The Retrograde Burn
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
