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"...science fiction is sort of like a sociological genome. It's a huge range of possible futures, most of them useless; some vital. You never really know in advance."
- Peter Watts
 |
| Tin Cabby (Flying Robotic Taxi) | ||
| An autonomously controlled flying taxi cab. |
In the future world of Cities in Flight, the creation of semi-intelligent machines made most regular jobs obsolete - like that of cab drivers.
| The cab came floating down out of the sky at the intersection and maneuvered itself to rest at the curb next to them with a finicky precision. There was, of course, nobody in it; like everything else in the world requiring an IQ of less than 150, it was computer-controlled... Chris studied the cab with the liveliest interest, for though he had often seen them before from a distance, he had of course never ridden in one. But there was very little to see. The cab was an egg-shaped bubble of light metals and plastics, painted with large red-and-white checkers, with a row of windows running all around it. Inside, there were two seats for four people, a speaker grille, and that was all: no controls and no instruments... The big press-gang leader gestured Chris into the front seat, and himself climbed into the back. The doors slid shut simultaneously from the ceiling and floor, rather like a mouth closing, and the cab lifted gently until it hovered about six feet above street level. “Destination?” the Tin Cabby said cheerily, making Chris jump. “City Hall.” “Social Security number?” “One five six one one dash zero nine seven five dash zero six nine eight two one seven.” “Thank you.” “Shaddup.” “You’re welcome, sir.” The cab rose smoothly into the air and headed toward the center of the city, its rotors whirring softly. |
| Technovelgy from Cities in Flight,
by James Blish. Published by Avon in 1957 Additional resources -
|
This quote seems more and more prophetic today:
Compare to the automatic automobile from David H. Keller's 1935 story The Living Machine and the aircab from the 1955 novel Time Crime by H. Beam Piper.
The world-wide dominance of such machines, Chris’s father had often said, had been one of the chief contributors to the present and apparently permanent depression: the coming of semi-intelligent machines had created a second Industrial Revolution, in which only the most highly creative human beings, and those most fitted at administration, found themselves with any skills to sell which were worth the world’s money to buy.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Cities in Flight
More Ideas
and Technology by James Blish
Tech news articles related to Cities in Flight
Tech news articles related to works by James Blish
Tin Cabby (Flying Robotic Taxi)-related
news articles:
- ULTra PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) Planned For London
- ULTra Personal Pod Driverless Taxis Here!
- Will The Dashboard Disappear From Autonomous Cars?
- EHang 184 AAV Passenger Drone Future Of Commuting?
- Human-Carrying Drone Taxi 184 Approved For Test Flights
- Vahana, The Airbus Flying Taxi
- Griff 300 Octocopter Carries You And Friend
- Cormorant Flying Car
- Rolls Royce eVTOL Flying Car
- Audi Pop.Up Autonomous Electric Flying Car
| Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicle Technology |
| Inmotion Electric Unicycle In Combat |
| Congress Considers Automatic Emergency Braking, One Hundred Years Too Late |
| The 'Last Mile' In China Crowded With Delivery Robots |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
