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"[Science fiction] is the only kind of writing that allows you to look at the world we live in and change one piece at a time."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Reporting Machine | ||
| A robotic roving reporter. |
| The buzzing, super-alert obnoxiously persistent reporting machine said, "Is it true, Dr. Egon Superb, that you're going to try to enter your office today?"
There should have been some way to keep reporting machines out of one's house, Dr. Superb reflected. However, there was not... |
| Technovelgy from The Simulacra,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Ace in 1964 Additional resources -
|
Here's another descriptive passage:
It rolled toward him, blocking his way. "How do you feel, sir?"
Reporting machines could also talk directly to their audience:
"But for the present, we can only..." The newscaster rattled excitedly on, as all over the USEA the mechanical reporting machines coasted about in the areas of conflict, gathering data for him.
Dick provides this passage to let the reader know what he thinks about mechanical news media:
The idea of a reporting machine is a continuing theme for PKD; see also the autonomic interviewer from The Zap Gun (1965).
Dick was fascinated by the idea of a completely automated news production service; see homeopapes (short for homeostatic newspaper). In If There Was No Benny Cemoli, Dick refers to "news receptors" used by the fully automated news services for gathering news.
For a real-life implementation of this idea see this article on the roving robotic reporter.
After breakfast when he walked outside to his wheel he found a second reporting machine lying in wait for him...
"It is interesting," one of the reporting machines was murmuring, for the benefit of its TV audience...
The reporting machines extended their hose-like receptors, sucking in data rapidly.
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Tech news articles related to The Simulacra
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Reporting Machine-related
news articles:
- Paparazzi Bots Get The Picture
| 'Facetime Facelift' Beautifies Video Chats |
| Meeting Wendy Of Wendy's |
| Narrative Science And Phil Dick's Homeostatic Newspaper |
| BookTrack Adds Sound To Books |
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'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.'
