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"Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| Commercial Fly | ||
| An autonomous, fly-sized manufactured creature that presents commercial advertisements. |
| Something sizzled to the right of him. A commercial, made by Theodorus Nitz, the worst house of all, had attached itself to his car.
"Get off," he warned it. But the commercial, well-adhered, began to crawl, buffeted by the wind, toward the door and the entrance crack. It would soon have squeezed in and would be haranguing him in the cranky, garbagey fashion of the Nitz advertisements. He could, as it came through the crack, kill it. It was alive, terribly mortal: the ad agencies, like nature, squandered hordes of them. The commercial, flysized, began to buzz out its message as soon as it managed to force entry. "Say! Haven't you sometimes said to yourself, I'll bet other people in restaurants can see me! And you're puzzled as to what to do about this serious, baffling problem of being conspicuous, especially-" Chic crushed it with his foot. |
| From The Simulacra,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by 1964 in Ace Additional resources -
|
Here's another quote that gives more details about the device:
"Do people seem able to see right through your clothing?" it squeaked at them, bat-like, as it slithered into concealment under the front seat.
Jeff Noon does an interesting update on this idea in his 2000 novel Nymphomation; see the entry for blurbfly.
...a Theodorus Nitz commercial slipped in through the open window.
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| Soli Gesture Tech Will Be In Google Pixel 4 |
| Lost Language Meanings Found By Machine Learning |
| The Future Of Elon Musk's Neuralink |
| BloxVox Mutes Cellphone Convos |
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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 Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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