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"I received a nice letter the other day from the Dalai Lama. He had read 'The Nine Billion Names of God'. It is about a computer at a Tibetan monastery."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Photosight | ||
| An automotive device that automatically follows a painted white line on the roadway, letting the car drive itself. |
| They came off that onto an old fashioned road, obviously built in the days of four-wheeled cars, and BJ stepped the Volta up to ninety. A moment later they merged into traffic on one of the new speedways, where the Volta could cruise along at 200 with the rest of the traffic.
BJ set the car on automatic, letting the photosight follow the white lane strip, and turned to face him. |
| Technovelgy from The Sign of the Tiger,
by Alan Nourse (w/Meyer). Published by Amazing Science Fiction Stories in 1958 Additional resources -
|
This seems like an early reference to this idea, which has resurfaced in the race to develop cars that could drive autonomously on existing roadways.
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and Technology from The Sign of the Tiger
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Tech news articles related to The Sign of the Tiger
Tech news articles related to works by Alan Nourse (w/Meyer)
| Maybe It's Too Soon To Require Autonomous Mode |
| Caterpillar Electric Mining Loader Not Yet Ready For Moon |
| Engineer Creates Crazy Motorized Track Hospital Bed |
| Xiaomi Self-Driving Self-Balancing Scooter |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
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'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
