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"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Mechanical Cleaning Device | ||
| A small, ground-based autonomous robot doing basic janitorial work. |
This is a relatively early reference to this idea. The Roomba vacuum cleaner and the Scooba floor cleaning robot from iRobot are now ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive devices.
(Scooba in action)
| Most of the Interior staff had gone home to bed; it was almost three in the morning, and the corridors and offices were deserted. A few mechanical cleaning devices crept here and there in the darkness. |
| Technovelgy from The Unreconstructed M,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Science Fiction Stories in 1957 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the MSE-6 series repair and clean up droid, made famous in the original 1976 film Star Wars.
Also, fans of Ray Bradbury might be thinking of the robot mice from his 1950 novel The Martian Chronicles, while Heinlein fans might be thinking of the hired girl robot from his 1956 novel The Door into Summer.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Unreconstructed M
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Tech news articles related to The Unreconstructed M
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
| Athena Smart Security Guard Robot With Face Recognition |
| SpaceHopper Microgravity Robot Lands On Its Feet |
| No Tips! Robotic Food Delivery In Phoenix |
| Micro-Robots Are Smallest, Fully Functional |
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'You are who we say you are, Dr. Dakin,' Turner said.'
'It's area, and its consequent light-gathering capacity, was many times greater than any rigid mirror...'
'Tell me your torments,' the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion.
'...a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football.'
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
