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"The answer to the problem of information overload on the Net is reputations… engineer a system called a reputation server."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Counselor | ||
| An electronic source of advice for humans. |
| HER VOICE was quite steady the next morning as she asked the Counseling Office for a special appointment. Fifty credit-units extra for not waiting her turn, but what did that matter?
 (The Counselor from 'Throwback' by Miram Allen de Ford) The robot clerk in the waiting-room checked her number, then let her into the little room where the towering Counselor took up all of one wall. She shut the inward-locking door, peered through the one-way glass to watch the robot go back to its desk, and lay down on the long couch. The Counselor lighted up immediately. The mechanical voice repeated her number, indicating that her dossier was before it for reference, and recited the opening formula: “This is a confidential consultation lasting one hour. What is your problem?” The microfilm began to pour out from the slot into the plastic container in which she would carry it away afterwards. It was hard to begin. For a moment Kathrin had the embarrassing feeling that the Counselor was a human being, like the human psychoanalysts in ancient times she had read about. The voice had to reiterate: “What is your problem, please?” |
| Technovelgy from Throwback,
by Miriam Allen deFord. Published by Startling Stories in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Compare this device with the robot psyche tester from Colony (1953) by Philip K. Dick, Sigrid von Shrink from Gateway (1970) by Frederik Pohl, the mechanotherapist from Bad Medicine (a 1956 Robert Sheckley story), Dr. Smile, from Dick's 1964 novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
