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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Boppers | ||
| Self-reproducing robots; they did not obey Asimov's laws for robots (or any other man-made rules). |
These are the machines we fear; independent machines that make their own choices based on their own logic (which owes nothing to us).
| In the shaft's great, vertical tunnel, bright beings darted through the hot light; odd-shaped living machines that glowed with all the colors of the rainbow. These were the boppers; self-reproducing robots who obeyed no man. Some looked humanoid, some looked like spiders, some looked like snakes, some looked like bats. All were covered with flickercladding, a microwired imipolex compound that could absorb and emit light. |
| Technovelgy from Wetware,
by Rudy Rucker. Published by Avon Books in 1988 Additional resources -
|
Compare these robots with the ultimate in sophistication (and servility) - C3PO, the droid from George Lucas' Star Wars.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Wetware
More Ideas
and Technology by Rudy Rucker
Tech news articles related to Wetware
Tech news articles related to works by Rudy Rucker
Boppers-related
news articles:
- Festo's eMotionButterfly, AirJelly And AirPenguin Robots
| AI Operates An Excavator |
| Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish |
| Will An AI Found A New Religion? |
| Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass |
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'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'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.'
