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"The point sticks in your head: physics rules. Virtue does not triumph unless the physics allows it."
- Larry Niven

WatchdØg (Watchdog)  
   

What happens when mankind is ready to leave the cradle and seek other worlds? Who can you leave behind?

...the earth shook and the sky split as the giant rockets lifted the soul and body of man to Pluto and the distant stars.

Only he stayed behind.

Basically he was six hundred square miles of squat building, with control over a world-wide network of smaller stations and probes.

A babysitter.

Technovelgy from WatchdØg, by Jack C. Haldeman.
Published by Ultimate Publishers in 1972
Additional resources -

Compare to the Machine from The Machine Stops (1909) by EM Forster, the government machine from Mechanocracy (1932) by Miles J. Breuer, the machine city from Twilight (1934) by John Campbell, the games machine from The World of Null-A (1945) by AE van Vogt, central computer from The City and the Stars (1956) by Arthur C. Clarke and the Vulcan 3 computer from Vulcan's Hammer (1960) by Philip K. Dick.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from WatchdØg
  More Ideas and Technology by Jack C. Haldeman
  Tech news articles related to WatchdØg
  Tech news articles related to works by Jack C. Haldeman

WatchdØg (Watchdog)-related news articles:
  - The Vacuum Tube Supercomputer Centre

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