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"My feeling is that the chance of our surviving into the twenty-first century as working civilization is less than fifty percent but greater than zero."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Unicephalon 40-D | ||
| A problem-solving supercomputer. |
| ...an unknown possibly hostile flotilla detected at eight hundred astronomical units from the sun...
It had been the homeostatic problem-solving structure Unicephalon 40-D at the White House in Washington, D.C. which had detected this possible external enemy; in its capacity as President of the United States it had at once dispatched ships of the line to stand picket duty. |
| Technovelgy from Stand-By,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy in 1963 Additional resources -
|
As President, Unicephalon 40-D could splice itself into the co-ax of any cable news station and deliver "pseudo-autonomic news bulletins" via its "synthetic verbalizing-organ."
Jim Briskin, glancing at Ed Fineberg and Peggy, waited.
"Comrade citizens of the United States," the flat, unmodulated voice from the TV speaker said, all at once. "The interregnum is over, the situation has returned to normal." As it spoke, words appeared on the monitor screen, a ribbon of printed tape passing slowly across, before the TV cameras in Washington, D.C. Unicephalon 40-D had spliced itself into the co-ax in its usual fashion; it had pre-empted the program in progress: that was its traditional right.
The voice was the synthetic verbalizing-organ of the homeostatic structure itself.
The speaker of the TV set said abruptly, "Psuedo-autonomic news bulletin. Stand by, please." Then again there was silence.
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
