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"The best fuzzy rules, the best knowledge, deal with the turning points of the system. If a race-car driver teaches you how to drive, you don't need him to show you how to drive on the straightaway. It's how he handles the curves that matters."
- Bart Kosko
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| National Network Surveillance | ||
| A system for providing the government with a way to monitor computer network use. |
The Shockwave Rider provides a very early reference to the idea of Federal surveillance of computer networks. In this excerpt, a person calls the special anonymous service called Hearing Aid to vent his rage at the system.
| From a public veephone at the railcar terminal linking Tarnover to the nearest town
he called Hearing Aid, for the first time in years, and for one dark lonely hour poured
out the secrets of his heart. It was a catharsis, a purgation. But long before he had
regained his room he was shaking, haunted by the fear that Hearing Aid's famous
promise ("Only I heard that!") might not be true. How could it be? It was absurd!
From Canaveral the tendril-ears of federal computers wove through his society like mycelia. No place could possibly be immune. All night he lay awake in fear, expecting his door to be flung open and stern silent men to take him under arrest. By dawn he was half-minded to kill himself. Miraculously, there followed no disaster |
| Technovelgy from The Shockwave Rider,
by John Brunner. Published by Harper and Row in 1975 Additional resources -
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'The peculiar quality of this light, which gave it its great preeminence over all other penetrating rays...'
'The overworked leg motor would have to cool down before he could work on it...'
‘Where to, sport?’ the starter at cab relay asked.
This is nothing new for science fiction fans!
'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
