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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Boulder | ||
| A device that homed in on a person's brain wave pattern; a very specific assassination device. |
| The weapon which Herb Lackmore had been provided with contained a costly replica of the encephalic brainwave pattern of James Briskin. He needed merely to place the device within a few miles of Briskin, screw in the handle, and then, with a switch, detonate it.
It was a mechanism, he decided, which provided little if any personal satisfaction. |
| Technovelgy from Cantata 140,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1964 Additional resources -
|
This device is a perfect example of needle-eyeification, a concept that Dick elucidates with gusto in his 1965 novel The Zap Gun.
Compare this device to the mechanical cobra from Roger Zelazny's 1967 masterpiece Lord of Light
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'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
