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"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
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| Reality Tape | ||
| The medium upon which the life experience of an electric ant - a robotic person - is presented. |
| "...The punched tape roll above your heart mechanism is not a programming turret but is in fact a reality-supply construct. All sense stimuli received by your central neurological system emanate from that unit and tampering with it would be risky if not terminal..."
If I cut the tape, he realized, my world will disappear. |
| Technovelgy from The Electric Ant,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Mercury Press in 1969 Additional resources -
|
Compare to Life Chamber from The Chamber of Life (1929) by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, the feelies from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), virtual reality from The Theatre and Its Double (1938) by Antonin Artaud, the permanent hookup from Spectator Sport (1950) by John MacDonald, the Saga technology from Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars (1956), dead-show from Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1974) by James Tiptree, Jr. and stimsim from William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984).
Compare also to video glasses from Islands in the Net (1988) by Bruce Sterling, Tru-Vu Lenses from Earth (1990) by David Brin, data goggles from Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson,eyecaps from Starfish (1999) by Peter Watts, overlay specs from Halting State (2007) by Charles Stross and HUD glasses from Daemon (2009) by Daniel Suarez.
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'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...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
