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"One can see the free software movement as a precusor for a "free hardware" or "free wetware" movement--one that will provide free libraries of designs for biological or nanotechnological products that replicators can be programmed to churn out."
- Charles Stross
 |
| Living Machines | ||
| Robots that are able to learn. |
An interesting early treatment of the distinction between automated machinery and mechanisms that are capable of learning.
| "Man is not a machine in the purely
mechanical sense, though many of his
functions are demonstrably mechanical.
The ability to reason, however it has
evolved, whatever it may be at bottom,
whether a bewildering complexity of reflex actions or not, lifts man above the
dignity of — a machine. Does this imply
the impossibility of creating machines
(mechanical brains) that can profit by
experience, go through the processes
which we call thought? No; but it does
imply that such machines (however created) are no longer mere mechanisms.
There is here a dialectical process to be
reckoned with. Machines that 'learn'
are living machines."
Living machines ! I mouthed that phrase over and over to myself — and mouthing it I looked at the cylinders with increasing dread. They were machines. |
| Technovelgy from The Mentanicals,
by Francis Flagg. Published by Amazing Stories in 1934 Additional resources -
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
