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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
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| Robot Psyche Tester | ||
| An automated psychiatric evaluation device. |
It's important to have objective information about your mental state. Who better to decide than a robot?
| The robot psyche tester whirred, integrating and gestalting. At last its color code lights changed from red to green.
"Well?" Hall demanded. "Severe disturbance. Instability ratio up above ten." "That's over danger?" "Yes. Eight is danger. Ten is unusual, especially for a person with your index. You usually show about a four... If you could give me more data-" Hall set his jaw. "I can't tell you any more." "It's illegal to hold back information during a psyche test," the machine said peevishly. "If you do that you deliberately distort my findings." |
| Technovelgy from Colony,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Compare this device with Sigrid von Shrink from Gateway (1970) by Frederik Pohl, the machine psychologist from James Blish's Cities in Flight, the mechanotherapist from Bad Medicine (a 1956 Robert Sheckley story), Dr. Smile, from Dick's 1964 novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Colony
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and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to Colony
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Robot Psyche Tester-related
news articles:
- Airbnb Has AI Psychiatrist Looking At Your Facebook
- Algorithm Predicts Marriage Success (HAL 9000 Will See You Now)
- 'Seabreeze' Apple And UCLA Project To Beat Depression
| MIT Computerized Bionic Leg Is Part Of The User |
| Bone-Building Drug Evenity Approved |
| BrainBridge Concept Transplant Of Human Head Proposed |
| Natural Gait With Prosthetic Connected To Nervous System |
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'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
