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"IMHO, having students do computer games projects is absolutely the best possible way to teach programming, graphics, software engineering, object oriented programming, etc."
- Rudy Rucker

Smartcab  
  An automated taxicab, fully self-driving, that can be summoned from a portable device.  

Very early description of something like an Uber, where you use your pocket-sized device to bring a taxicab straight to your location.

Rayno ordered up a smartcab and we piled out of Buddy's. No more riding the transys for us, we were going in style! We charged the smartcab off to some law company and cruised all over Eastside.

Riding the boulevards got stale after awhile, so we rerouted to the library. We do a lot of our fun at the library, 'cause nobody ever bothers us there. Nobody ever goes there. We sent the smartcab, still on the law company account, off to Westside.

Technovelgy from Cyberpunk!, by Bruce Bethke.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1983
Additional resources -

Here's another excerpt about smartcabs:

We got a smartcab outside the library and went off to someplace Lisa picked for lunch. Georgie got this idea about garbaging up the smartcab's brain so that the next customer would have a real state fair ride, but Rayno wouldn't let him do it. Rayno didn't talk to him during lunch, either.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Cyberpunk!
  More Ideas and Technology by Bruce Bethke
  Tech news articles related to Cyberpunk!
  Tech news articles related to works by Bruce Bethke

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