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"Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
- Philip K. Dick
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| Smart Lanes | ||
| Roadways that monitored, directed and controlled traffic. |
The problem of how to control the movement of large numbers of private vehicles has been a recurring question for science fiction writers (Americans, anyway). One of Robert Heinlein's early short stories, The Roads Must Roll, address similar technical issues. In his case, the roads themselves provide motive power.
| John had taken the wheel at Barstow when I-40 fed into I-15…He could brake and steer and control the throttle. The road sensors now measured his speed and how much his Jeep veered from the midpoint of his lane. The state would fine him for high speed or a wide dispersion from the lane midpoint. They all drove on smart lanes that billed and fined the driver by the second. |
| Technovelgy from Nanotime,
by Bart Kosko. Published by Avon Books in 1987 Additional resources -
|
Another writer who works with this issue is Philip K. Dick - see his story Minority Report. Traffic control systems using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) devices in license tags has also been implemented.
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| Tesla Electric 'Giga Train' Operational In Germany |
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| Volvo's Autonomous Truck |
| Eviation Alice Electric Plane First Flight |
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'...great rectangular slabs of muscle, slung into a rectangular frame.'
'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
'... underneath they consisted of networks of cooling tubes against the skin.'
