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"Science fiction is what scientists would do if they could - if they had enough grant money, enough time, and enough brains to do the wonderful things they would like to do."
- Greg Bear
 |
| Worldcraft Bubble | ||
| An incredibly detailed mechanical simulation of a world. |
"'Own Your Own World' ... quite a slogan."
| The Worldcraft bubble glittered, catching the light...
Lora turned on the bubble. It glowed, winking into brilliance... She increased the magnification, bringing the microscopic central planet into focus... Again Lora increased the magnification. The central planet grew, showing a pale green ocean lapping faintly at a low shoreline. A city came into view, towers and broad streets, fine ribbons of gold and steel. Above, twin suns beamed down, warming the city. Myriads of inhabitants swarmed about their activities...
 (The Worldcraft Bubble from 'The Trouble with Bubbles' by Philip K. Dick) The inhabitants of the city came into sharp view. They hurried about their business, endless thousands of them. In cars and on foot. Across spidery spans between buildings, breathtakingly beautiful. |
| Technovelgy from The Trouble With Bubbles,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by If in 1953 Additional resources -
|
This idea is an interesting prediction of the current fascination with artificial, computer-generated worlds in games like Spore.
Compare to the Neoterics from Theodore Sturgeon's 1941 novella Microcosmic God, the pocket universe from Murray Leinster's 1946 story of that name and the Kingdom in a Box from Stanislaw Lem's story collection The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age.
We couldn't leave Terra so we built our own worlds right here. Sub-atomic worlds, in controlled containers. We start life going on a sub-atomic world, feed it problems to make it evolve, try to raise it higher and higher... It's certainly a creative pastime. Not a merely passive viewing like television..."
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Trouble With Bubbles
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to The Trouble With Bubbles
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Worldcraft Bubble-related
news articles:
- Our World Formed In A Bubble?
- Satoshi Tomizu Creates Pocket Universes And Worldcraft Bubbles In Glass
| MAI-Voice-2 Microsoft Text-To-Speech |
| Prufrock-MB2 Ready In Nashville |
| US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger |
| Terraformer Industries Make Methane |
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'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
