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"Cyberpunk worked when the Internet was in its hand-wound crystal radio phase, when you had to be a sort of hobbyist to do e-mail, and it all had a very steep learning curve. Those days are over."
- William Gibson
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| News Receptor | ||
| Devices used by homeostatic newspapers to gather news autonomically. |
How did automated news machines create their newspapers? Where did the information in the stories come from?
| Seated in his office, Peter Hood heard far underground a low rumble, a halting, uncertain stirring. They had been successful.
The edition, when it was laid on his desk by a bustling CURBman, surprised him by its accuracy. Even in its dormant state, the newspaper had somehow managed not to fall behind events. It's receptors had kept going... It was uncanny, Hood thought as he read the lead article. The very news-gathering services of the homeopape had reached into his own life, had digested and then inserted into the lead article even the discussion between himself and Otto Dietrich. The newspaper was - had been - doing its job. Nothing of news-interest escape it, even a discreet conversation carried on with no outsiders as witnesses... |
| Technovelgy from If There Were No Benny Cemoli,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy Publishing in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Current computer-generated news devices (like Google News) also make use of "news receptors". It's not difficult to imagine a news service that used sources like Twitter and Facebook to create accurate stories about individuals, just like in the quote from the Dick story.
Continue reading about homeostatic newspapers.
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'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
