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"The whole problem of energy sources is going to be solved by little solutions, not by some big new piece of technology that does everything. We got into this crisis by believing that we had one big piece of technology that would do everything (oil)."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Phymech | ||
| A robotic physician. |
| Far more intricate than a mere robot-mechanical, yet far simpler
than a human brain, it was capable-after proper conditioning-of the most delicate of operations. Further, the "phymech", as it was tagged soon after, was capable of infallible diagnosis, involving anything organic.
The House of Congress appointed a committee of fact-finders, from the firm of Data, Unlimited... They found phymechs could be operated in all the socialized hospitals of the Continent, for far less than was being spent on Doctor's salaries. A phymech absorbed one half pint of Iiquified radiol every three years, and an occasional oiling, to insure proper functioning.
So the government passed a law.
The Hippocratic Law of of 2088,
which said, in essence: Johns Hopkins was the first to be de-franchised.
 (Phymechs from 'Wanted in Surgery' by Harlan Ellison) A few specialist schools were maintained for a time, but it became increasingly apparent after the first three years of phymech operation, that even the specialists were slow compared to the robot doctors. |
| Technovelgy from Wanted in Surgery,
by Harlan Ellison. Published by IF Worlds of Science Fiction in 1957 Additional resources -
|
Additional details:
but no, it had to be a
brain job, with the phymechs' thirty
telescoping, snakelike appendages
extruded, and snicking into the
patient...
One of the telescoping, snakelike
tentacles of one phymech had a
wafer-thin circular saw on it, and
as Thomas watched, the saw sliced
down, and they could hear the buzz
of steel meeting skull...
...the snicker and gleam of the instruments being
whipped from their cubicles in the
phymech's storage-bin chest.
Compare to the emergency treatment tank from Agent of Vega (1949) by James Schmitz, the shipboard medical treatment from Contagion (1950) by Katherine MacLean, the
Gobathian from Time is the Simplest Thing (1961) by Clifford Simak, the surgical homeostatic unit from Now Wait For Last Year (1966) by Philip K. Dick, the diagnostat from The Man in the Maze (1969) by Robert Silverberg, electronic body analyzer from The Andromeda Strain (1969) by Michael Crichton, the crechepod from The Godmakers (1972) by Frank Herbert and the autosurgeon from Altered Carbon (2003) by Richard Morgan.
There
were no operating lamps in the
ceiling, as in old-style hospitals, for
the phymechs each had their own powerful "internal" light mounted
atop their heads, that served more
accurately than any outside light
could have...
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Wanted in Surgery
More Ideas
and Technology by Harlan Ellison
Tech news articles related to Wanted in Surgery
Tech news articles related to works by Harlan Ellison
Phymech-related
news articles:
- Robot Surgeons No Better Than Humans
| Robot Gas Station Attendant Pumps Gas For You |
| SnapBot Robots - You Choose Their Legs And They Choose Their Gaits |
| Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots |
| What's The Best Way To Ship And Unpack Humanoid Robots? |
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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.'
