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"Another reason why privacy could be just a passing fad, terrorism is going to get too good. [1997]"
- Larry Niven
 |
| Robot Psyche Tester | ||
| An automated psychiatric evaluation device. |
It's important to have objective information about your mental state. Who better to decide than a robot?
| The robot psyche tester whirred, integrating and gestalting. At last its color code lights changed from red to green.
"Well?" Hall demanded. "Severe disturbance. Instability ratio up above ten." "That's over danger?" "Yes. Eight is danger. Ten is unusual, especially for a person with your index. You usually show about a four... If you could give me more data-" Hall set his jaw. "I can't tell you any more." "It's illegal to hold back information during a psyche test," the machine said peevishly. "If you do that you deliberately distort my findings." |
| From Colony,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Compare this device with the machine psychologist from James Blish's Cities in Flight, the mechanotherapist from Bad Medicine (a 1956 Robert Sheckley story) and the more complex Dr. Smile, from Dick's 1964 novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
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SF writers popularized and elaborated on this idea a generation before the first patents were filed.
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