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"Real science opens windows for us to look through. We're right at the footsteps of the most interesting scientists around."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Reporting Machine | ||
| A robotic roving reporter. |
| The buzzing, super-alert obnoxiously persistent reporting machine said, "Is it true, Dr. Egon Superb, that you're going to try to enter your office today?"
There should have been some way to keep reporting machines out of one's house, Dr. Superb reflected. However, there was not... |
| Technovelgy from The Simulacra,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Ace in 1964 Additional resources -
|
Here's another descriptive passage:
It rolled toward him, blocking his way. "How do you feel, sir?"
Reporting machines could also talk directly to their audience:
"But for the present, we can only..." The newscaster rattled excitedly on, as all over the USEA the mechanical reporting machines coasted about in the areas of conflict, gathering data for him.
Dick provides this passage to let the reader know what he thinks about mechanical news media:
The idea of a reporting machine is a continuing theme for PKD; see also the autonomic interviewer from The Zap Gun (1965).
Dick was fascinated by the idea of a completely automated news production service; see homeopapes (short for homeostatic newspaper). In If There Was No Benny Cemoli, Dick refers to "news receptors" used by the fully automated news services for gathering news.
For a real-life implementation of this idea see this article on the roving robotic reporter.
After breakfast when he walked outside to his wheel he found a second reporting machine lying in wait for him...
"It is interesting," one of the reporting machines was murmuring, for the benefit of its TV audience...
The reporting machines extended their hose-like receptors, sucking in data rapidly.
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Reporting Machine-related
news articles:
- Paparazzi Bots Get The Picture
| 'Facetime Facelift' Beautifies Video Chats |
| Meeting Wendy Of Wendy's |
| Narrative Science And Phil Dick's Homeostatic Newspaper |
| BookTrack Adds Sound To Books |
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
