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"Another reason why privacy could be just a passing fad, terrorism is going to get too good. [1997]"
- Larry Niven
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| Conscious Farm Machines | ||
| Farm machinery that worked on their own. |
| In front of me, everything seemed alive; the huge plow, which had been standing near by the house without my having observed it in the night, seemed to shake itself, turn around, swung its arms, creaked - and began to move back southward whence it and we came, tearing up the vegetation, ploughing the ground beneath the wrenched-out plants and shrubs.
All around me were machines, busily at work, machines that threshed and winnowed grain... A picture of machines and no man to control or watch them! Machines that seemingly with full consciousness walked out into the fields to do their daily work. And even now there was no living being among them save myself... Had these machines in some incredible fashion been provided with brains?
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| Technovelgy from The Hidden Colony,
by Otfrid von Hanstein. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1935 Additional resources -
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Here's a quick picture, as shown in the original magazine story:
(Conscious autonomous farm robot)
Compare to the automatic cultivators from Piracy Preferred (1930) by John W. Campbell, the robot farmer from The Turning Wheel (1954) by Philip K. Dick, the field minder from Who Can Replace A Man (1963) by Brian Aldiss, the Robomule from Bill the Galactic Hero (1965) by Harry Harrison, the self-guided tractor from At the Bottom of a Hole (1966) by Larry Niven, the robot crab from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson and the agricultural robot pest controller from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Hidden Colony
More Ideas
and Technology by Otfrid von Hanstein
Tech news articles related to The Hidden Colony
Tech news articles related to works by Otfrid von Hanstein
Conscious Farm Machines-related
news articles:
- John Deere Self-Driving Tractor
- Self-Driving Tractors From China Plan Ahead
- SF Writers Predicted John Deere Autonomous Tractors
| Fully Electric, Fully Automated Vegetable‑growing Agribots |
| MK-V Smart Tractor - Fully Electric, Farmer Optional |
| Vertical Farm In Singapore's Output Is 1.5 Tons Per Day |
| Mashambas Skyscraper Farm Design Wins |
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'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
