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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
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| Precrime Analytical Wing | ||
| Contains the precognitives and the machinery need to hear and analyze their predictions of future crimes. |
In his disturbing short story The Minority Report, Dick explores a future in which people are routinely arrested for crimes they are planning to commit. How can police know whom to arrest, when the supposed perpetrators have not yet done anything wrong?
| Doors opened and closed, and they were in the analytical wing. Ahead of them rose impressive banks of equipment - the data-receptors, and the computing mechanisms that studied and restructured the incoming material. And beyond the machinery sat the three precogs, almost lost to view in the maze of wiring...
In the gloomy half-darkness the three idiots sat babbling. Every incoherent utterance, every random syllable, was analyzed, compared and reassembled in the form of visual symbols, transcribed on conventional punchcards, and ejected into various coded slots. All day long the idiots babbled, imprisoned in their special high-backed chairs, held in one rigid position by metal bands, and bundles of wiring, clamps... The three gibbering, fumbling creatures, with their enlarged heads and wasted bodies, were contemplating the future. The analytical machinery was recording prophecies, and as the three precog idiots talked, the machinery carefully listened. |
| Technovelgy from The Minority Report,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Fantastic Universe in 1956 Additional resources -
|
In the film version, Steven Spielberg creates a showcase of future technology; see the Science Fiction in the News story Minority Report-style 'Discovery Informatics' At Purdue University for an example. See the recent story of a real-life precrime division at Precrime computer (minus precogs) Predicts Robbery. Also, the tongue-in-cheek Precrime.org website is pretty cool (if it is still up).
The word "precog" (short for "precognitive") was used much earlier - as a verb - by H. Beam Piper in his 1948 story Police Operation: see the entry for precog.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Minority Report
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to The Minority Report
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Precrime Analytical Wing-related
news articles:
- Precrime Computer (Minus Precogs) Predicts Robbery
- 'Precrime' Database For London Homicide Prevention Unit
- Future Attribute Screening Technologies Precrime Detector
- Precrime CCTV Cameras Now In Britain
- 'Precrime' Parole System In Philadelphia
- And DARPA Shall SMITE The Wicked
- PredPol Predicting Crime As It Happens
- Google Offers Future Prediction In The Cloud
- BrainNet Triple Telepathic Gaming Threat
| Is There A Subterranean Ocean? |
| The Robotic Shopping Cart Of The Future |
| Arctic Resource Jackpot An Old Wish |
| Marie Curie's Papers Still Radioactive |
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'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.'
'Detailed plans for the construction of the Gundstetter-Halone warp drive were flowing.'
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
