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"I just can't be politic. I never learned how to do that and I don't like doing that. I think it's false."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Central Computer | ||
| A computer capable of running an entire city. |
| No man or woman was without some absorbing intellectual interest. Eriston, for example, spent much of his time in prolonged soliloquies with the Central Computer, which virtually ran the city, yet which had leisure for scores of simultaneous discussions with anyone who cared to match his wits against it. For three hundred years, Eriston had been trying to construct logical paradoxes which the machine could not resolve. He did not expect to make serious progress before he had used up several lifetimes.
... The Council ruled Diaspar, but the Council itself could be overridden by a superior power - the all-but-infinite intellect of the Central Computer. It was difficult not to think of the Central Computer as a living entity, localized in a single spot, though actually it was the sum total of all of the machines in Diaspar. Even if it was not alive in the biological sense, it certainly possessed at least as much awareness and self-consciousness as a human being. |
| From The City and the Stars,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Unknown in 1956 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Machine from The Machine Stops (1909) by EM Forster, the government machine from Mechanocracy (1932) by Miles J. Breuer, the machine city from Twilight (1934) by John Campbell, the games machine from The World of Null-A (1945) by AE van Vogt, the Vulcan 3 computer from Vulcan's Hammer (1960) by Philip K. Dick and the WatchdØg from WatchdØg (1972) by Jack C. Haldeman.
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'The pokkecon rang again. *The coffee’s for him?* Tsuyoshi said.'
The Jetsons imagined so much future.
'Rod placed the brain inside the panel... the horse raised its head, wiggled its ears, blinked twice, gave a tentative whinny.'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Chain of hotels that specialized in non-human service.'
'But then... not every bulldozer operator works on the Moon.'
'Griff found the white and pink map distracting and switched it off using his tongue mouse.'
