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"As a writer, I don't want to chew my cud. I don't want to have to spit out and regurgitate the same stuff again."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Alterable License Number | ||
| A device which permits a driver to alter the license plate without leaving the vehicle. |
Mary Sperling doesn't want the traffic control cameras to identify her vehicle as she leaves the highway. What to do?
| ...she fumbled in the storage compartment on the instrument board and fumbled, apparently purposelessly.
But the registration number which the traffic control automatically photographed as she left the controlway was not the number in which the car was registered. |
| Technovelgy from Methuselah's Children,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
|
See a slick newfangled idea for implementing the same idea in Daniel Suarez' 2009 novel Daemon - the digital ink license plate.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Methuselah's Children
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to Methuselah's Children
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
Alterable License Number-related
news articles:
- Lawmaker License Plates Invisible To Traffic Cams
| The Amazing Lightfoot Electric Scooter With Solar Assist |
| Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicle Technology |
| Inmotion Electric Unicycle In Combat |
| Congress Considers Automatic Emergency Braking, One Hundred Years Too Late |
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'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
