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Driverless Hotel Rooms Predicted In 1828
Hacker moon writer Nathan Waters suggests that driverless hotel rooms could replace both Uber and Airbnb, since a car is just a small room on wheels:
...You look up at a lego-like modular skyscraper reaching high above the moonlit clouds. Your room docks with an electric skate and is elevated thirty stories up before slotting into a window-facing position. One of the side panels opens smoothly to reveal a large adjoining living room module.
(Via Driverless Hotel Rooms: The End of Uber, Airbnb and Human Landlords)
Jane Webb Loudon wrote about houses that moved anywhere you liked in her 1828 classic The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century:
"Certainly it does," replied the doctor. "Did you never see a moving house before? You must have heard of them at any rate, for nothing can be more common.
Your room begins driving itself towards Bondi and a live map displays on one of the side panels. You sit back and relax with some Netflix on the other side panel. Exactly 6 minutes later, a drone lands on the roof and lowers your order through a compartment in the ceiling. If you need to order any package you simply ask the room and a drone arrives; it even does laundry!
"Oh! what is that?" cried Edric, without attending to him, as, lost in amazement, he saw a house in the suburbs gently slide out of its place, and glide majestically along the road, a lady at one of the windows kissing her hand to some one in another house as she passed. "Do my eyes deceive me, or does that house move?"
(Read more about steam-propelled moving houses)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/9/2019)
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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