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The bedroom door was partly open. “What’s this?” he called. He could see her dim, underwear-clad form as she traveled back and forth between the bed and closet. “This thing that looks like a human head with no features. The size of a baseball.” Maren called back cheerfully, “That’s from 202.” “My sketch?” He stared at the object. Plowshared. This was the product for the retail market derived from the decision of one concomody on the Board. “What’s it do?” he asked, finding no switches. “It amuses.” “How?” (The Orville from "The Zap Gun" by Philip K. Dick) Maren appeared in the doorway briefly, wearing nothing. “Say something to it.” Glancing at her, Lars said, “I’m more amused just looking at you. There’s about three pounds you’ve put on.” “Ask,” Maren said, “the Orville a question. Ol' Orville is the rage. People cloister themselves for days with it, doing nothing but asking and getting answers, it replaces religion.” Maybe he could ask Ol’ Orville that question. He said to the hard, small sphere in his hand, “Am I making a mistake... By believing,” he said, “that it is time that those who claim to be making machines to kill and maim and lay waste ought to have the ethical integrity to really make machines that kill and maim and lay waste instead of machines that constitute an elaborate pretext to finally bring forth a nonentity, a decadent novelty, such as yourself?” Again he waited, but OP Orville remained silent. “It’s broken,” he called to Maren. “Give it a second. It’s got fourteen thousand minned parts in it; they have to function in sequence.” “You mean the entire guidance system from 202?” He stared at Ol' Orville with horror. Yes, of course; this sphere was precisely the size and shape of the guidance system of 202. He began thinking of the possibilities. It could solve problems, fed to it orally, rather than on punched or iron oxide tape, to a magnitude of sixty constituents. No wonder it was taking its time to answer him. He had activated a prize assembly. Probably in no sketch would he exceed this. And now here it was, Ol' Orville, a novelty to fill the vacant time and brains of men and women whose jobs had degenerated into repetitious psychomotor activity on a level that a trained pigeon could better perform.

Technovelgy from The Zap Gun (Project Plowshare), by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy Publishing in 1965 Additional resources -

Ol' Orville finally answers:

In Lars’ hand, forgotten, 0l’ Orville stirred and spoke.

It was uncanny; he blinked as its telepathic verbal response croaked at him, its answer to a question he had already forgotten asking. “Mr. Lars.”

“Yes,” he said, hypnotized.

Ol’ Orville creakily unwound its long-Iabored-for results. Toy though it was, Ol’ Orville was not facile. Too many components had gone into its make-up for it to be merely glib. “Mr. Lars, you have posed an ontological query. The Indo-European linguistic structure involved defeats a fair analysis; would you rephrase your question?”

After a moment of thought he said, “No, I wouldn’t.”

Ol’ Orville was silent and then it responded, “Mr. Lars, you are a forked radish.”

For the life of him he did not know whether to laugh. “Shakespeare,” he said, speaking to Maren who, now reasonably fully dressed, had joined him, was listening, too. “It’s quoting.”

“Of course. It relies on its enormous data-bank. What did you expect, a brand-new sonnet? It can only retail what it’s been fed. It can only select, not invent.”

For reference purposes, here is the Amazon Echo.

(Amazon Echo)

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Zap Gun (Project Plowshare)
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip K. Dick
  Tech news articles related to The Zap Gun (Project Plowshare)
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick

Orville-related news articles:
  - Alexa+ And Its AI Brain Improvements

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