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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

Automatic Defensors  
  Devices that follow along with you, providing extra viewpoints.  

By the time the Laertes sun peered palely over the horizon that was the northeast cliff’s edge, the assault was under way. The automatic defensors, which he had set up the night before, moved slowly from point to point ahead of the mobile blaster.

Jamieson cautiously saw to it that one of the three defensors also brought up his rear. He augmented that basic protection by crawling from one projecting rock after another. The machines he manipulated from a tiny hand control, which was connected to the visiplates that poked out from his headgear just above his eyes. With tensed eyes, he watched the wavering needles that would indicate movement or that the defensor screens were being subjected to energy opposition...

With bleak eyes, Jamieson studied the wreck through the telescopic eyes of one of the defensors.

Technovelgy from The Rull, by A.E. van Vogt.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1948
Additional resources -

Compare to the bee cams from City of Pearl (2004) by Karen Traviss.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Rull
  More Ideas and Technology by A.E. van Vogt
  Tech news articles related to The Rull
  Tech news articles related to works by A.E. van Vogt

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