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"IMHO, having students do computer games projects is absolutely the best possible way to teach programming, graphics, software engineering, object oriented programming, etc."
- Rudy Rucker
 |
| Dustmote | ||
| A tiny sensor device that could also form networks with other motes. |
These devices are also called "localizers" in the novel.
| The dustmote image swelled until it was a meter across and almost forty centimeters high. The head-up display automation painted appropriate reflections and shadows.
"Thanks." Trinli stood so they could all see him over the top of the lens-shaped gadget. "This is the basic Qeng Ho localizer - normally embedded in protective barriers, and so on. But see, in a benign environment - even outside in the shade - it is quite self-sufficient." "Power?" said Reynolt. Trinli waved his hand dismissively. "Just pulse them with microwaves, maybe a dozen times a second. I don't know the details, but I've seen them used in much larger numbers on some projects. I'm sure that would give finer control. As for sensors, these puppies have several simple things built in - temperature, light level, sonics." |
| Technovelgy from A Deepness in the Sky,
by Vernor Vinge. Published by Tor in 1999 Additional resources -
|
Here's another bit:
...these dustmotes already had sensors and independence built in. They weren't an embedded component of a system; they could be the system itself.
For a modern analog, take a look at multi-hop RFID tags.
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More Ideas
and Technology from A Deepness in the Sky
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and Technology by Vernor Vinge
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- Ultrasonic Wireless ‘Neural Dust’ Sensors For Medical Monitoring
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
