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"...in fifty years, do you believe that people will be recognizably human?"
- Greg Bear
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| Minisec | ||
| A device like a personal digital assistant (PDA) today. |
Duncan Makenzie had a new minisec, and he was not quite sure how parts of it worked.
| The 'Sec was the standard size of all such units, determined by what can fit comfortably in the human hand. At a quick glance, it did not differ greatly from one of the small electronic calculators that had started coming into general use at the end of the twentieth century. It was, however, infinitely more versatile, and Duncan could not imagine what life would be like without it.
Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had no more controls than that of its ancestor of three hundred years earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had an unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation - for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode. |
| Technovelgy from Imperial Earth,
by Arthur C. Clarke. Published by Harcourt Brace in 1976 Additional resources -
|
The device also had a dictionary function and could hold large amounts of data. It could also communicte with desktop console computers.
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| Giant Lunar Surface Test Bed Built On Earth |
| Zai Pits (West Sahel) And Dew Collectors (Dune) |
| Away Rude Mechanicals! I Want Self-Sensing Variable-Stiffness Artificial Muscles. |
| 3D Printing In Mid-Air |
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'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'If you surf over a bump... If you surf over a pothole...'
'Then the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and they stood an instant transfixed...'
'Noiselessly, on rubber-tired wheels, they journeyed...'
'...copy two of the original document no longer can be superimposed on copy one.'
My prize robot, tall, dashing would speak and act for me...
'A palm lock must be keyed to one individual's hand shape and palm lines.'
'I have transferred the ego of a dog to a synthetic dog brain in the skull case of a robot dog.'
