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"Beyond a thousand years from now humans are not quite recognizably human, and I have trouble finding characters."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Robot Tracking Device | ||
| Small UAV robot remotely operated by an artificially intelligent computer. |
Vulcan 3, an underground self-modifying supercomputer, uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to find out what's going on with the humans.
| On the chest of drawers something was perched. Something that gleamed, shiny metal, gleamed and clicked as it turned toward her. She saw into two glassy mechanical lenses, something with a tubelike body, the size of a child's bat, shot upward and swept toward her. |
| From Vulcan's Hammer,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Ace Books in 1960 Additional resources -
|
Take a look at what artists in 1960 thought a robot tracking device looked like in this first edition cover photo:
The same device attacked the leader of the resistance movement:
"...I found most of it." He triumphantly displayed a charred but still intact metal cylinder with an elaborate system of antennas, receptors and propulsion jets.
Here's what it feels like to live in this future society:
Madness, he thought. The ultimate horror for our paranoid culture; vicious unseen mechanical entities that flit at the edges of our vision, that can go anywhere, that are in our very midst. And there may be an unlimited number of them. One of them following each of us...
The existence of these devices is one demonstration of Vulcan 3's paranoia; ordinarily, it relied on countless human beings who provided it with information. Dick compares the provision of data to Vulcan 3 with slopping a hog - he refers to "data troughs."
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More Ideas
and Technology from Vulcan's Hammer
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and Technology by Philip K. Dick
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Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
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- Aggressive Autonomous Quadrotor UAV Makes Its Moves
- Perching Flying Robot
- Wasp Micro-UAV Used By Texas SWAT
- Rolling Robot's Helicopter Transformation
- sFly UAVs Swarm Together For SAR
- EASE Surveillance Robot Hovering Near You
- Google's Project Wing Will Find You
- Flying Robot Has An Arm
- Prodrone Dual Arm Drone PD6B-AW-ARM As Predicted In 1960
| Zephyr Solar-Electric Stratospheric Drone |
| Robot Hummingbird Hovers Biomimetically |
| Capitalist Big Brother Co-Opts Regular Big Brother |
| Juggalo Face Paint Disrupts Facial Recognition |
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'The planes flew continuously, twenty-four hours a day...'
'It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.'
'...a single perfectly level platform, which rose so high above the water that it was not splashed by the waves.'
'Is an extra-factual memory that convincing?' Quail asked.
Megastructures have repair robots, which have repair robots, ad infinitum.
‘She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew...’
Perfect for clot-busting in the human brain. No Raquel Welch and no lasers, though.
