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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Commuter Cooling Unit | ||
| A portable air conditioner for commuters. |
Richard Hnatt lives in a future Earth that is too hot. It is so hot that anyone who is forced to go out of doors is required to wear their own cooling unit for their own personal safety and well-being.
| Looking out the window he saw with aversion that already it had become too hot for human
endurance; the footer runnels were abruptly empty as everyone ducked for cover. The time was
eight-thirty and he now had to leave; rising, he went to the hall closet to get his pith helmet
and his mandatory cooling-unit; by law one had to be strapped to every commuter's back until
nightfall... He opened the door and stepped out into the hall, feeling the cool wind of the portable unit as it chugged from behind him... Shortly, he was aboard a thermosealed interbuilding commute car, on his way to downtown New York City... |
| From The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Doubleday in 1965 Additional resources -
|
This book was written in 1964; time enough for Dick to see astronauts carrying their own
cooling units when climbing into rockets. It is a considerable leap to see how they might be
used in global warming.
The notion of global warming dates from the late 1800's; scientists vary in their estimates about how much our
weather patterns and global temperature vary due to our impact on the environment, or long-term changes that are normal for the Earth.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
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and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
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- Blaux Your Personal Commuter Cooling Unit
- Sony Pocket Air Conditioner Is Phil Dick's Idea!
| Sony Pocket Air Conditioner Is Phil Dick's Idea! |
| ROAM Robotics Skiing Exoskeleton |
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| The Hammock Caravan And Italo Calvino's Octavia |
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'... sweating, heat-blistered engineers at every interplanetary radiograph station on three planets.'
'The huge plow... seemed to shake itself - and began to move back southward.'
'... he went to the hall closet to get his pith helmet and his mandatory cooling-unit.'
'We still use people at the main gates, but here it's an automated sentry.'
'The single sheet he held, and even the words and signatures upon it, were all integral parts of a single giant molecule...'
