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"I think we're still on that topic, still trying to figure out what computers are, how they change us, why we use them."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Parastatics | ||
| Means of completely eliminating injury in vehicles during crashes. |
This is something that we really wish were true; seatbelts and airbags are just the palliative measures we use until the real article comes along.
| Every vehicle, every craft on water or in the air, had to have its little black box; it was a guarantee of "salvation now," as Mitke jokingly put it toward the end of his life; at the moment of danger - a plane crash, a collision of cars or trains - the little black box released a "gravitational antifield" charge that combined with the inertia produced by the impact (more generally, by the sudden braking, the loss of speed) and gave a resultant of zero. This mathematical zero was a concrete reality; it absorbed all the shock and all of the energy of the accident, and in this way saved not only the passengers of the vehicle but also those whom the mass of the vehicle would otherwise have crushed. |
| Technovelgy from Return from the Stars,
by Stanislaw Lem. Published by Not known in 1961 Additional resources -
|
This is a relatively early version of this idea; you can also see it in the nullentropy bin from Frank Herbert's work, as well as the Slaver stasis field from Larry Niven's novels.
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
