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"The germinal societies like Singapore and communist Hong Kong may give us a mutant capitalism that is both virulent and efficient. This is a significant cultural danger."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Directional Ticket | ||
| A ticket that also has the property of glowing while you are going toward what you bought. |
Here's another handy device, one that could be implemented in real life in a variety of ways. For example, how about a theater ticket that actually helped you find your seat. It could be implemented with a system of scanners, with an embedded RFID tag in the ticket itself. Ushers - enjoy your sinecures while you can! The fact that they are lighted would be of help also.
| "Where do I go?" "Follow the light. The ticket will keep glowing as long as you're pointed in the right direction." |
| From Foundation,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Doubleday in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Another example of a device that gives you valuable feedback is a battery that has a test strip built-in. I don't know how cheap the test strip has to be before it makes sense to put one on every battery, but I'll bet theater tickets are expensive enough provide the necessary margin. Maybe the ticket itself doesn't light up, but when you pass through a set of gates, a sensor in the gate tells you if you are going in the right direction.
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'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
There's a lesson in this for neural net AI engineers everywhere.
