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"There's a tendency to think that maybe if we can just throw enough hardware at the AI problem, then evolution can take care of the rest. Certainly that's how God went about making us."
- Rudy Rucker
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| Glass Bees | ||
| Walnut-sized flying automata. |
| I had plenty of time to examine this creature, and similar ones were now arriving from all directions like workmen at the gate of a factory when a siren blows. At first I was struck by the large size of these bees. Although they were not as big as those which Gulliver met in Brobdingnag - he defended himself against them with his little sword - they were considerably larger than a normal bee or even a hornet. They were about the size of a walnut still encased in its green shell. The wings were not movable like the wings of birds or insects, but were arranged around their bodies in a rigid band and acted as stabilizing and supporting surfaces.
Their large size was less striking than one might think, since they were completely transparent. Indeed, my idea of them was derived mainly from the glitter of their movements as seen in the sunlight. When the creature I now watched hovered before the blossom of a convolvulus whose calyx it tapped with a tong shaped like a glass probe, it was almost invisible. |
| Technovelgy from The Glass Bees,
by Ernst Junger. Published by Klett in 1957 Additional resources -
|
The glass bees were able to work with each other to a remarkable degree:
They also were diverse in structure and purpose:
Thanks to Diego G. Peralias for contributing this item.
I also heard their fine whistling break off abruptly when they came to the blossoms and stopped short. Behind me, however, in front of the hives, which now stood in full sunlight, these sounds gathered into one high continuous whistle. It must have taken subtle deliberation to avoid collisions when the swarms of automatons were massed before they sluiced into the hives.
I distinguished diverse models - almost colonies - of automatons which combed the surrounding fields and shrubs. Creatures of especially strong structure bore a whole set of probosscises which they dipped into umbels and flower clusters. Others were equipped with tentacles that closed around the tufts of the blossoms like delicate pincers, squeezing out the nectar.
I found an interesting throwaway reference to "mechanical bees" in To Follow Knowledge by Frank Belknap Long:
Plenty of people had cut their thumbs on experimental arrowheads, and poked around in kitchen middens, and lifted the lid on hives of mechanical bees.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Glass Bees
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and Technology by Ernst Junger
Tech news articles related to The Glass Bees
Tech news articles related to works by Ernst Junger
Glass Bees-related
news articles:
- Robot Bees 3D Printed By Festo
| Epirus High-Power Microwave Defeats Drones |
| It's A Giant Robot! You Reporters Have Been Warned! |
| Tactile Skin Supplier Map |
| Robot Bees 3D Printed By Festo |
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
