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"The point sticks in your head: physics rules. Virtue does not triumph unless the physics allows it."
- Larry Niven

Localizer  
  Devices that work together to form ad-hoc networks.  

See also the material for dustmote.

Localizers were a basic tool of an technical civilization. The tiny devices chirped their impulse codes at one another, using time of flight and distributed algorithms to accurately locate each participating device. Several thousand of them formed the positioning grid on the rubble pile. Together they were a kind of low-level network, providing information on the orientation, position, and relative velocity of the electric jets and the rubble.
Technovelgy from A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge.
Published by Not known in 1999
Additional resources -

Take a look at the related links for modern day examples.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from A Deepness in the Sky
  More Ideas and Technology by Vernor Vinge
  Tech news articles related to A Deepness in the Sky
  Tech news articles related to works by Vernor Vinge

Localizer-related news articles:
  - Fog Computing (AKA Edge Computing) Ad Hoc Networks

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