Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"We didn't have a telephone and our family until I was about 15, in high school."
- Ray Bradbury
 |
| Precrime Analytical Wing | ||
| Contains the precognitives and the machinery need to hear and analyze their predictions of future crimes. |
In his disturbing short story The Minority Report, Dick explores a future in which people are routinely arrested for crimes they are planning to commit. How can police know whom to arrest, when the supposed perpetrators have not yet done anything wrong?
| Doors opened and closed, and they were in the analytical wing. Ahead of them rose impressive banks of equipment - the data-receptors, and the computing mechanisms that studied and restructured the incoming material. And beyond the machinery sat the three precogs, almost lost to view in the maze of wiring...
In the gloomy half-darkness the three idiots sat babbling. Every incoherent utterance, every random syllable, was analyzed, compared and reassembled in the form of visual symbols, transcribed on conventional punchcards, and ejected into various coded slots. All day long the idiots babbled, imprisoned in their special high-backed chairs, held in one rigid position by metal bands, and bundles of wiring, clamps... The three gibbering, fumbling creatures, with their enlarged heads and wasted bodies, were contemplating the future. The analytical machinery was recording prophecies, and as the three precog idiots talked, the machinery carefully listened. |
| From The Minority Report,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Fantastic Universe in 1956 Additional resources -
|
In the film version, Steven Spielberg creates a showcase of future technology; see the Science Fiction in the News story Minority Report-style 'Discovery Informatics' At Purdue University for an example. See the recent story of a real-life precrime division at Precrime computer (minus precogs) Predicts Robbery. Also, the tongue-in-cheek Precrime.org website is pretty cool (if it is still up).
The word "precog" (short for "precognitive") was used much earlier - as a verb - by H. Beam Piper in his 1948 story Police Operation: see the entry for precog.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Minority Report
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to The Minority Report
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Precrime Analytical Wing-related
news articles:
- Precrime Computer (Minus Precogs) Predicts Robbery
- 'Precrime' Database For London Homicide Prevention Unit
- Future Attribute Screening Technologies Precrime Detector
- Precrime CCTV Cameras Now In Britain
- 'Precrime' Parole System In Philadelphia
- And DARPA Shall SMITE The Wicked
- PredPol Predicting Crime As It Happens
- Google Offers Future Prediction In The Cloud
| Is There A Subterranean Ocean? |
| The Robotic Shopping Cart Of The Future |
| Arctic Resource Jackpot An Old Wish |
| Marie Curie's Papers Still Radioactive |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
'They existed in the Life Bank, as did virtually every plant...'
'Its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did not see it as a machine...'
'What better purifying machine is there than... grass?'
'The autonomic TV interviewer, camera in its hand, blocked his path.'
It's time we started to get rid of that distinction between metal and flesh, and IC and neuron, don't you think?
'...a wide sheet of clear material suddenly flared with light and swirling color.'
'Transmitting to its manipulator, far away now, all that it heard through its ear microphones...'
