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"At its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we can't predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe."
- John Brunner

Ident Darts  
  Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that track individuals.  

Just a brief mention in the story.

"You shouldn't be foning so soon," the doctor said as he studied his chart. "Mr. Garson Poole, owner of Tri-Plan Electronics. Maker of random ident darts that track their prey for a circle-radius of a thousand miles, responding to unique enceph wave patterns.
Technovelgy from The Electric Ant, by Philip K. Dick.
Published by Mercury Press in 1969
Additional resources -

Dick was fascinated by the concept of recognizing people or tracking them via brain patterns - via electroencephalograph. In his 1965 novel The Zap Gun he writes about a door that opens only for the correct brain wave pattern (see Cephalic Pattern Door). Also, in his 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly, he wrote about a Cephalochromoscope (Cephscope), which offered recreational uses for brain waves.

There is a precursor to the idea of an autonomous machine that could track people based on their brain waves; see mechanical cobra from Roger Zelazny's Hugo-awardwinning 1967 novel Lord of Light.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Electric Ant
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip K. Dick
  Tech news articles related to The Electric Ant
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick

Ident Darts-related news articles:
  - Israel Deploys Sharp Shooter AI-powered Robot Guns

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