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"I did more research, and realized I almost would rather be a biologist than a writer, because there was incredible stuff going on!"
- Greg Bear
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| Scramble Suit | ||
| A superthin membrane upon which are projected the characteristics of a million different people, it confers instant anonymity. |
In the novel, narcotics officers wear these suits to disguise their appearance.
"Let's hear it for the vague blur!" the host said loudly...
"Now you will notice," the Lions Club host said, "that you can barely see this individual... because he is wearing what is called a scramble suit...
| The scramble suit was an invention of the Bell laboratories, conjured up by accident by an employee named S. A. Powers... Basically, his design consisted of a multifaceted quartz lens hooked up to a million and a half physiognomic fraction-representations of various people: men and women, children, with every variant encoded and then projected outward in all directions equally onto a superthin shroudlike membrane large enough to fit around an average human.
As the computer looped through its banks, it projected every conceivable eye color, hair color, shape and type of nose, formation of teeth, configuration of facial bone structure - the entire shroudlike membrane took on whatever physical characteristics were projected at any nanosecond, then switched to the next... In any case, the wearer of a scramble suit was Everyman and in every combination (up to combinations of a million and a half sub-bits) during the course of each hour. Hence, any description of him - or her - was meaningless. |
| Technovelgy from A Scanner Darkly,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Doubleday in 1977 Additional resources -
|
As it turns out, they have artificial voices as well, leaving "in our minds no characteristics."
Here's an explanation of how this "technology" of Dick's was shown in the movie version of the book:
(Explanatory Scramble suit video from the movie version)
Compare the scramble suit with the optical effects suit from A Plague of Demons (1965) by Keith Laumer, the mimetic polycarbon suit worn by Panther Modern leader Lupus Yonderboy in William Gibson's Neuromancer, the Jodie grid from The Diamond Age (1995) by Neal Stephenson and the abglanz from The Mountain in the Sea (2022) by Ray Naylor.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from A Scanner Darkly
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to A Scanner Darkly
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Scramble Suit-related
news articles:
- PKD's Scramble Suit In A Scanner Darkly Movie Trailer
- Let's Hear It For The Vague Blur!
- Face Recognition Now Sees Through Disguises
- HyperFace Aims To Foil Facial Recognition
- Camouflage To Confound Face Recognition
- RealFace Glamoflage T-Shirt Like PKD's Scramble Suit
- CV Dazzle Anti-Surveillance Make-Up
- Project KOVR Fashion Protection From Infosphere
- Deep Learning Creates New Faces
- Adversarial Pattern Shirts Confound Object Detection Systems
- CGI 'Master Faces' Impersonate Several Identities
| Don't Want To Wear A TIght Shiny Bodysuit? |
| 'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer |
| Rigid Metallic Clothing From Science Fiction To You |
| iPhone Pocket All Sold Out! |
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
'From a distance it could resolve the cosmic rays reflected from various substances.'
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
