Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"I don't know why I write science fiction. The voices in my head told me to!"
- Charles Stross
 |
| CopSpace | ||
| A virtual location for police lifelogs, official communications, paperwork, informational databases and evidence of all kinds. |
Police officers wear specs, which are able to both capture visual information, and also present information to the officer wearing the specs.
Rather than filing written reports on what happens when on patrol, your specs can record what happens and place it in your lifelog. Any of your interactions with superiors or other officers can also be logged. All of this information is placed in a virtual repository called CopSpace.
| CopSpace sheds some light on matters, of course. Blink and it descends in its full glory. Here's the spiralling red diamond of a couple of ASBO cases on the footpath (orange jackets, blue probation service tags saying they're collecting litter.) There's the green tree of signs sprouting over the doorway of number thirty-nine, each tag naming the legal tenants of a different flat. Get your dispatcher to drop you a ticket, and the signs open up to give you their full police and social service case files, where applicable... This is the twenty-first century, and all the terabytes of CopSpace have exploded out of the dusty manila files and into the real world... |
| Technovelgy from Halting State,
by Charles Stross. Published by Ace in 2007 Additional resources -
|
CopSpace was also useful for filing paperwork in a place where it would be visible to other law enforcement personnel:
CopSpace seems to have been formed from MySpace, and then bulked up.
Here's another take on it:
John Brunner mentions something like this in The Shockwave Rider:
You tagged the flat as NOT RESPONSIVE TO OFFICER in CopSpace, timestamped it, scribbled out a paper police access form, and jammed it through the letter-box...
You blink back red overlays - the airport is a kaleidoscopic blur of too much information in CopSpace..."
... while the booth itself was sacrosanct, this veephone circuit like all such was tied into the city police-net, and thence to the tireless federal monitors at Canaveral.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Halting State
More Ideas
and Technology by Charles Stross
Tech news articles related to Halting State
Tech news articles related to works by Charles Stross
CopSpace-related
news articles:
- Tactical Ground Reporting System - TIGR By The Tail
- Evidence.com Virtual Evidence Warehouse By TASER
- FCC Wants Nationwide Wireless Public Safety Network
- PocketCop Data Warehouse From Verizon
- Interpol Launches Metaverse For Law Enforcement
| Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer |
| Cortex 1 - Today A Warehouse, Tomorrow A Calculator Planet |
| Is Agentic AI The Wrong Kind Of Smartness? |
| Jetson Orin Nano Super 70 Just $249 |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'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.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
