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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Filing Crystal | ||
| Part kiosk, part storage system. |
| Besides them, a twelve-foot filing crystal glowed like pin quartz. "Ron," said Rydra. "No, Ron and Calli, too."
The Navigators stepped up, puzzled. "You know some first navigator who suicided recently that you think we might—" Rydra shook her head. She passed her hand before the filing crystal. In the concaved screen at the base, words flashed. She stilled her fingers. "Navigator-Two. . . ." She turned her hand. "Navigator-One. . . ." She paused and ran her hand in a different direction.". . . male, male, male, female... Rydra watched, her hand drifting through centimeters over the crystal's face. The names on the screen flashed back and forth. Rydra's hand came down on the crystal face, and the name glowed on the screen. “Mollya Twa, Navigator-One." Her coordinate numbers followed. |
| Technovelgy from Babel-17,
by Samuel R. Delany. Published by Ace Books in 1966 Additional resources -
|
Regarding the use of gestures to manipulate an electronic device, compare to the hand wave control from Philip K. Dick's 1955 novel Solar Lottery and the gesture controlled devices in Douglas Adam's 1979 novel A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Babel-17
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and Technology by Samuel R. Delany
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Tech news articles related to works by Samuel R. Delany
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- Gesture-Controlled iPads?
- FingerIO Active Sonar Smartphone Finger Tracking
| Lonestar Offers Lunar Storage For Ultimate In Security |
| 100X Improvement In DNA Information Storage |
| Twist Bioscience High Density Digital Data On DNA |
| Store One Bit On One Atom |
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'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
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'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.'
