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"The answer to the problem of information overload on the Net is reputations… engineer a system called a reputation server."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Robobug | ||
| A cyborg insect. |
| Doyle swiveled in his chair, reached up to a shelf, and took down a clear plastic box that held a dragonfly clinging to a twig... The dragonfly had been turned into something called a HIMEMS... Ramirez and the others simply called them "robobugs."
...he opened the box, took out the twig and carefully placed the HIMEMS in the middle of a table. The hybrid dragonfly was a blue-eyed darner with a long body... and a tiny video lens. Slowly the insect moved its two pairs of wings... Doyle tapped his finger on the table, and the startled insect flew away. Doyle... activated the HIMEMS program on the computer. The first image on the monitor showed something dark, with a rough texture, and Doyle guessed that the dragonfly was resting on a tree branch. He attached a joystick to the computer and gently pushed the lever forward. The dragonfly responded like a toy airplane, taking off and heading east... He had learned to control the hybrids. You couldn't direct precise movements, but you could send the dragonfly in a general direction and then make it stop and hover... |
| From The Golden City,
by John Twelve Hawks. Published by Doubleday in 2009 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the the Roachster from Sparrowhawk. Philip K. Dick also deserves a mention for the commercial flies from his 1966 novel The Simulacra, and don't forget Jeff Noon's blurbflies from his 2000 novel Nymphomation.
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'Very tiny pseudo insects that... can unite to form a superordinate system.'
Great, an autonomous slamhound. It is cute, though.
'The smoky globe, hung in the vault, was shot with colored light...'
'The electric cook was stirring empty nothing in a pan, with a zeal worthy a dozen eggs.'
