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"What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Personality Death | ||
| Punishment leaves the body intact. |
What can be done if an individual who lives in a society as tightly controlled as a prison can no longer be deterred by the threat of additional restrictions?
| A sudden humming came from the robot judge as he stirred to life. "Order in the court," he said...
"...Carl Tritt, you are guilty of crimes too numerous to be expiated by sentencing. Therefore, you are condemned to Personality Death. Psycho-surgery shall remove all traces of this personality from your body, until this personality is dead, dead, dead." |
| From Robot Justice,
by Harry Harrison. Published by Fantastic Universe in 1959 Additional resources -
|
This is a very early mention of this idea. Robert Heinlein touches on this idea in his discussion of the idea of a group ego in his 1941 novel Methuselah's Children.
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