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"I can't tell whether or not there's going to be a Singularity. I don't really believe the rapture of the nerds stereotype..."
- Charles Stross

Tickler  
  Clears smog and saves the residue for later use.  

Didn't I see one of these in the Sharp catalog? Maybe for one room in your house; this one would freshen the air in your neighborhood.

You remember that anciently there was smog in the cities. Oh, it could be drawn out of the air easily enough. All it took was a tickler. Albert made a tickler machine. He would set it fresh every morning. It would clear the air in a circle three hundred yards around his hovel and gather a little over a ton of residue every twenty-four hours. This residue was rich in large polysyllabic molecules which one of his chemical machines could use.
Technovelgy from Eurema's Dam, by R.A. Lafferty.
Published by New Dimension in 1972
Additional resources -

I seem to recall Nicholas Negroponte pontificating about how WiFi would free the internet by making "lilypads" of access (200 foot diameter circles around WiFi access points). Well, that would be nice; but I think having lots of 300 yard diameter clean air zones would be nicer.

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Science Fiction in the News

Bone-Building Drug Evenity Approved
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'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'

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'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'

Grok Scores Best In Psychological Tests
'Try to find out how he ticks...'

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'My fingers are not that sensitive...'

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'The greatest problem of all was the elimination of the human element of braking together with its inevitable time lag.'

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'Across the ancient sea floor a dozen tall, blue-sailed Martian sand ships floated, like blue smoke.'

Thermostabilized Wet Meat Product (NASA Prototype)
There are no orbiting Michelin stars. Yet.

Could Crystal Batteries Generate Power For Centuries?
'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'

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