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"...if you want to know what your future looks like, don't waste your time on Analog; read Time magazine. We are already saturated in the future. "
- Peter Watts
 |
| Autonomic Plow | ||
| A set of farm implements able to combine and perform as a weapon. |
| On the miniature TV screen Bunny Hentman was doing an act in which he played a German industrialist; wearing a blue, double-breasted suit, he was explaining to his board of directors how the new autonomic plows which their cartels were producing could be used for war. Four plows would guide themselves, upon news of hostilities, into a single unit; the single unit was not a larger plow, but a missile-launcher. |
| Technovelgy from Clans of the Alphane Moon,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Ace Books in 1964 Additional resources -
|
Delicious sarcasm from PKD; it derives from a passage in Isaiah:
In this case, peaceful plows become weapons.
The United States government promoted Operation Plowshare starting in 1962, which was an attempt to use nuclear explosives for excavation. Take a look at the Operation Plowshare video shown below; 12 million tons of earth were displaced, creating a crater 320 feet deep by 1280 feet wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
Dick himself wrote about a world in which competing nations maintained a balance of power by thinking of an offensive weapon and then immediately "plowshare" them into consumer goods (see The Zap Gun).
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Clans of the Alphane Moon
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to Clans of the Alphane Moon
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Autonomic Plow-related
news articles:
- Grapevine Pruning Robot
| Can A Swarm Of Deadly Drones Take Out An Aircraft Carrier? |
| Has Turkey Been Stealing Rain From Iran? |
| We Need To Build Anti-Drone Systems For Civilian Spaces |
| Bullet Steers Itself! The Advanced Low-Cost Munitions Ordnance ALaMO |
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'... an artificial intelligence equal to the human.'
'Rayno folded up the microterm and tucked it back inside his jumper.'
'Nemourlon armor of reasonable weight resists penetration by most fragments and any bullet that is not both reasonably heavy and fairly high-velocity.'
'Several thousand of them formed the positioning grid on the rubble pile.'
'Its slack walls tightened, bulged, were crossed by ripples and waves of movement.'
'Norman... had never ridden any motorized device that lacked onboard steering and balance systems.'
You will note that HG Wells also figured out the aspect ratio of the future!
'As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped...'
'At the ringside opposite them a table had been removed to make room for a large transparent plastic capsule on wheels.'
