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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
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| Electronic-Eyed Snake | ||
| A fully automated stomach pump. |
In the not-too-distant future imagined by Bradbury in the novel, accidental suicide by ingestion of freely available tranquilizers and other drugs is so common that machines are created to deal with it.
In this excerpt, Montag is forced to summon medical help for his wife, who has apparently overdosed on sleeping pills.
| They had this machine. [It] slid down into your stomach like a black cobra down an echoing well looking for all the old water and the old time gathered there... Did it suck out all of poisons accumulated with the years? It fed in silence with an occasional sound of inner suffocation and blind searching... The entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench in one's yard. |
| Technovelgy from Fahrenheit 451,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Doubleday in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Here's another description:
All of us who read this novel as school children in the 1960's recognize many elements of the world of Fahrenheit 451 in present-day America. The depersonalized care offered to poor people in large cities might as well be done by the same contractors who install cable TV in your house.
The author artfully draws an analogy, getting you to think about the psychology of a person who willingly loses herself to drugs and media. If you dug down deep enough, would you find the despair or ennui that causes this behavior?
He tried to count how many times she swallowed and he thought of the visit from the two zinc-oxide-faced men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths and the electronic-eyed snake winding down into the l ayer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water, and he wanted to call out to her, how many have you taken tonight?
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| ErythroMer Artificial Blood |
| MouthPad Supports Head And Tongue Tracking |
| Drug Induces Hibernation-Like State In Humans |
| Drug To Regenerate Teeth In Humans |
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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.'
