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"The only real way to maintain privacy is to be uninteresting. It may be that privacy is a passing fad."
- Larry Niven
 |
| The Machine (M) | ||
| An autonomous robot able to alter its appearance and functionality at will. |
| The machine was a foot wide and two feet long: it looked like an oversized box of crackers. Silently, with great caution, it climbed the side of a concrete building; it had lowered two rubberized rollers and was now beginning the first phase of its job...
Beam, holding the cigaret lighter, walked toward the M. A receptor stalk waved toward him and the machine retreated. Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed. For an interval, the device struggled with itself; then, reluctantly, the portable t-v unit again became visible. |
| From The Unreconstructed M,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Science Fiction Stories in 1957 Additional resources -
|
I don't have text references, but readers might compare the Shrike from Dan Simmon's 1989 novel Hyperion and the Aleph from Gregory Benford's 1983 novel Against Infinity.
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- MorpHex MKII The Unreconstructed Hexapod
| MIT's Shape-Shifting Robot Materials |
| LS3 AlphaDog Robot Marine Corps Video |
| Haptic Gloves Teach Braille Without Effort |
| Harvard's Robobee Has Insect-Inspired Eyes |
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The T-100, an advanced prototype, is made of liquid metal. Not quite ready.
'He admired the fast-plodding, articulated legs, so necessary since roads had degenerated...'
'Well, we have a black coating now that’s ninety-nine percent absorptive...'
'There were things growing all over the place, not just in some domed enclosures blasted some millions of miles out in to space.'
