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"The trouble with too much genre SF is that it's so obviously the product of the conscious mind."
- William Gibson
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| Auto-Navigation | ||
| Automatic car navigation, provided on a video console in the dashboard. |
This is a very early instance of the idea of having a navigation screen in the middle of your dashboard that shows your current location, and which allows you to enter the coordinates of your desired destination.
| …he lighted his destination screen and turned the knob that shifted the broadcast map. Left to right, top to bottom, section to section he shifted it, until he located the portion of Carnegi Avenue he desired. He punched out its coordinates and lowered the wheel. |
| Technovelgy from The Dream Master (He Who Shapes),
by Roger Zelazny. Published by Ace Books in 1966 Additional resources -
|
Compare this idea with the Camden Speedster from Methuselah's Children, a 1941 novel by Robert Heinlein. The Speedster can drive itself, but you can't actually set a destination.
Here's a picture of my very own auto-navigation system, on my Toyota Camry hybrid:
Now, if somebody would just come out with a system that lets the car drive itself to the destination, that would be great.
Hey, what do you know, there's the Google's autonomous self-driving car.
Compare to the locatimeter from The Iron World by Otis Adelbert Kline.
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and Technology from The Dream Master (He Who Shapes)
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Tech news articles related to The Dream Master (He Who Shapes)
Tech news articles related to works by Roger Zelazny
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'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
