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"It is change ... that is the dominant factor in society today... the world as it will be. This means that ... every man must take on a science fictional way of thinking.""
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Brood Assembly | ||
| Artificially intelligent computers that can replicate themselves. |
What can you do when your city needs artificially intelligent computers to guide it?
| He [Mayor Amalfi] was saying to Frad: "The arrangements with the machinery are cumbersome, but not difficult in principle. We can lend you our Brood assembly until she replicates herself; then you reset the daughter machine, feed her scrap and out come City Fathers to the number that you'll need - probably about a third as many as we carry, and it'll take maybe ten years. You can use the time feeding them data, because in the beginning they'll be idiots except for the computation function. |
| From Cities in Flight,
by James Blish. Published by Avon in 1957 Additional resources -
|
Readers will recognize the idea of self-reproducing automata, which John von Neumann wrote about in 1948 in a lecture called "General and Logical Theory of Automata".
You can read an even earlier treatment of the idea in the 1941 short story The Mechanical Mice, by Eric Frank Russell (writing as Maurice A. Hugi). See the entry for robot mother.
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'LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.'
'...a rolled-up sheet of a thin, dark metal strange to them.'
'... his contract with Space Industries required him to work summers in their orbital factory complex.'
'Space-weather men had been placed at their disposal...'
With each successive print, our model needed to incorporate more structural ingredients to minimize print failures.
'... Wendis stared thoughtfully at the brilliant lines on the spectroscope screen.'
'A special spot-wavex scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully.'
'... it was as if the upper part had been removed, like a cut deck of cards.'
Sumomo will get those office workers into good shape!
