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"it slowly dawned on me that the landscape of science is maybe what interests people a great deal in science fiction."
- Gregory Benford
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| Decibel Alarms | ||
| Alarms that would go off if the noise in public gathering places was rising to riotous levels. |
This item not only predicts recent developments in surveillance technology by thirty years (see related links below), but also provides some instruction on how to evade this technology as well. That's full-service futurism.
| Decibel alarms were legally required in every meeting hall, including churches, but clever agitators could and had sabotaged them so that the suppressant gases were not released when the "noise" level reached the sharp pitch of incipient riot. The professional agitators had also learned how to modulate their voices below the danger level, carefully goading their victims into the spontaneous combustion which neither gas nor water jets could control. |
| From A Bridle for Pegasus,
by Anne McCaffrey. Published by Analog in 1973 Additional resources -
|
Thanks to Erika for sending in this item.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from A Bridle for Pegasus
More Ideas
and Technology by Anne McCaffrey
Tech news articles related to A Bridle for Pegasus
Tech news articles related to works by Anne McCaffrey
Decibel Alarms-related
news articles:
- Detect Aggressive Voices With Sigard By Sound Intelligence
- 'Agression Detectors' Don't Work When Spying On Students
| Augmented Reality Palm Keyboard |
| Taihang Solar Farm Accurately Pictured In 1911 |
| Amazon Automatic Packaging Catches Up With Gernsback's 1911 Book |
| Seriously, Was Our Universe Created In A Lab? |
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'Employees above a certain level were implanted with advanced microprocessors...'
'The robot knelt before the head, lifted it slowly, and with... its strong hands placed it on its shoulders...'
'But it had slid, not rolled, down upon these angry fly-wheels, and in an instant, with all our friends, it had been hurled into the sky!'
'Three rows of four colored dots appeared on the heel of my left hand.'
'I brought it back to the ship, charged it up, reprogrammed the inertia chips and voila!'
'Their playmates were not “real,” but they were a lot realer than, say, a Betsy-Wetsy doll.'
'pirate three-vee satellites sanded out of orbit...'
'Oh, there you are! the balloon piped at the amorphous mass of living tissue...'
