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"The immediate problem with our meat brains is that they have no back-up. We can lose the most precious information we have from one bump on the head or stroke. You want a mind system with back-up that can access other databases."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Calster | ||
| A handheld device that printed legal currency on the spot. |
In the future world of the novel, most of life's necessities are free. However, luxury goods or experiences still cost something. To pay, you use a small box that prints currency for you, right on the spot.
| The robot hung up, and I did not have time to ask where I was supposed to look for the calster. I had no idea what it looked like. Getting up from the desk, which, abandoned, immediately shrank and shriveled up, I saw a kind of stand growing out of the wall next to the door; on it lay a flat object wrapped in transparent plastic and resembling a small cigarette case. On one side it had a row of little windows, in them showed the number 1100 1000. At the bottom were two tiny buttons labeled "1" and "0." I looked at it, puzzled, until I realized that the sum of 5000 had been entered in the binary system. I pressed the one and a small plastic triangle with the number one stamped on it fell into my hand. This, then, was a kind of stamping machine or press for money, up to the amount indicated in the Windows - the number at the top decreased by a unit. |
| From Return from the Stars,
by Stanislaw Lem. Published by Not known in 1961 Additional resources -
|
This is a strange sort of an idea, although it makes the future seem more real when computerized credit cannot pay for everything.
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'THE red tennis robot scooted desperately across the court...'
'The Consul remembered his first glimpse of the kilometer-long treeship...'
'Do you know what window washing used to cost by the hour?'
'Once the target is confirmed, it uses an IR laser to send a coded signal back to the parent, clearing it to attack.'
'I filled your bullet hole with flesh putty and the lattice.'
'... it will be easy to form an alphabet which shall enable us to converse with the inhabitants of the moon.'
'From the tower's huge octagonal base radiate wide silvery strips...'
'It was about five feet long... a black bullet head and red camera eyes.'
'The Law Society has strict rules on the use of pseudo-intelligent software...'
