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"The idea I want to push next is that the United States should make Siberia a Protectorate. Pay the Russians off – a hundred, two hundred billion dollars – and simply run Siberia in an ecologically responsible way."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Living Machines | ||
| Robots that are able to learn. |
An interesting early treatment of the distinction between automated machinery and mechanisms that are capable of learning.
| "Man is not a machine in the purely
mechanical sense, though many of his
functions are demonstrably mechanical.
The ability to reason, however it has
evolved, whatever it may be at bottom,
whether a bewildering complexity of reflex actions or not, lifts man above the
dignity of — a machine. Does this imply
the impossibility of creating machines
(mechanical brains) that can profit by
experience, go through the processes
which we call thought? No; but it does
imply that such machines (however created) are no longer mere mechanisms.
There is here a dialectical process to be
reckoned with. Machines that 'learn'
are living machines."
Living machines ! I mouthed that phrase over and over to myself — and mouthing it I looked at the cylinders with increasing dread. They were machines. |
| Technovelgy from The Mentanicals,
by Francis Flagg. Published by Amazing Stories in 1934 Additional resources -
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'If you're one of those rarities who haven't attended a rocket-polo "carnage", let me tell you it's a colorful affair.'
'They filed clumsily into the battleroom, like children in a swimming pool for the first time, clinging to the handholds along the side.'
'a walking balloon proceeded with long strides of its aluminum legs...'
'There was nowhere on the planet where science and technology could not provide one with a comfortable home...'
'Most men updated their PIP on New Year's Day...'
'...a misshapen, many-tentacled thing about twice the size of a man.'
