Science Fiction Dictionary
A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

Latest By
Category:


Armor
Artificial Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work

"The best fuzzy rules, the best knowledge, deal with the turning points of the system. If a race-car driver teaches you how to drive, you don't need him to show you how to drive on the straightaway. It's how he handles the curves that matters."
- Bart Kosko

CopSpace  
  A virtual location for police lifelogs, official communications, paperwork, informational databases and evidence of all kinds.  

Police officers wear specs, which are able to both capture visual information, and also present information to the officer wearing the specs.

Rather than filing written reports on what happens when on patrol, your specs can record what happens and place it in your lifelog. Any of your interactions with superiors or other officers can also be logged. All of this information is placed in a virtual repository called CopSpace.

CopSpace sheds some light on matters, of course. Blink and it descends in its full glory. Here's the spiralling red diamond of a couple of ASBO cases on the footpath (orange jackets, blue probation service tags saying they're collecting litter.) There's the green tree of signs sprouting over the doorway of number thirty-nine, each tag naming the legal tenants of a different flat. Get your dispatcher to drop you a ticket, and the signs open up to give you their full police and social service case files, where applicable... This is the twenty-first century, and all the terabytes of CopSpace have exploded out of the dusty manila files and into the real world...
Technovelgy from Halting State, by Charles Stross.
Published by Ace in 2007
Additional resources -

CopSpace was also useful for filing paperwork in a place where it would be visible to other law enforcement personnel:

You tagged the flat as NOT RESPONSIVE TO OFFICER in CopSpace, timestamped it, scribbled out a paper police access form, and jammed it through the letter-box...

CopSpace seems to have been formed from MySpace, and then bulked up.

Here's another take on it:

You blink back red overlays - the airport is a kaleidoscopic blur of too much information in CopSpace..."

John Brunner mentions something like this in The Shockwave Rider:

... while the booth itself was sacrosanct, this veephone circuit like all such was tied into the city police-net, and thence to the tireless federal monitors at Canaveral.

Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |

Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Halting State
  More Ideas and Technology by Charles Stross
  Tech news articles related to Halting State
  Tech news articles related to works by Charles Stross

CopSpace-related news articles:
  - Tactical Ground Reporting System - TIGR By The Tail
  - Evidence.com Virtual Evidence Warehouse By TASER
  - FCC Wants Nationwide Wireless Public Safety Network
  - PocketCop Data Warehouse From Verizon
  - Interpol Launches Metaverse For Law Enforcement

Articles related to Computer
Automatic Bot Traffic Is 38 Percent Of HTTP Requests
Neuroplatform Human Brain Organoid Bioprocessor Uses Less Electricity
AI Worms That Spread
Great. Now AIs Have Access To Hacking Tools

Want to Contribute an Item? It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add it here.

<Previous
Next>

Google
  Web TechNovelgy.com   

 

 

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 Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.

 

 

 

 

Science Fiction Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's   1950's
1960's   1970's
1980's   1990's
2000's   2010's

Science Fiction in the News

GITAI R1 Lunar Rover Like NASA Robonaut Centaur
'...waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'

Meshworm Soft Robot, With Peristaltic Crawling, Is Getting Better
'Seen close it was not completely flexible, but made instead of pivoted and smoothly finished segments.'

Mushroom 'Robot' Is Just A Start
'Some unknown race ... decided to help them out.'

Tesla Electric 'Giga Train' Operational In Germany
'...the cars are wedge-shaped at both ends.'

DOTPad Braille Device Offers Live Access
Amazing tactile display.

Biohybrid Robot Combines Living Muscle With Artificial Materials
'...great rectangular slabs of muscle, slung into a rectangular frame.'

Biohybrid Robots Made Of Living And Synthetic Materials
'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'

Drug Induces Hibernation-Like State In Humans
'... drugged and chilled and stowed in sleep tanks.'

Poul Anderson's 'Brain Wave'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."

AI Note-Taking From Google Meet
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'

More SF in the News

More Beyond Technovelgy

Home | Glossary | Science Fiction Timeline | Category | New | Contact Us | FAQ | Advertise |
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™

Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved.