Special gadgets and their use in fiction

T

Triner

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This is a serious thread.

I have a few questions for everyone:

1a. Is there a device that can find out or predict what someone will say or do to other people or things and when, and if so,

b. what's it's name?

c. and what works of fiction does it feature in?

2a. Is there a device that can speak to or do things for people, like a person is speaking to that person, without anyone actually saying anything to them, so one can get any answer they want, whether the questions they ask are positive or negative, and whether the things they want to do or find out how to do are good or bad, and if so,

b. what's it's name?

c. and what works of fiction does it feature in?

3a. Is there a device that allows someone to get an instant reply from another person or make someone instantly reply to them, and if so,

b. what's it's name?

c. and what works of fiction does it feature in?

etc.

I only want serious answers please.

Can you please answer my questions as soon as possible?

Triner
 
Triner said:
Can you please answer my questions as soon as possible?
Click to expand...
So this is for an essay, you have to hand in on Monday. ;)

I find the wording of your questions very difficult and poorly defined so I'm probably not answering the question you want answering..
But here goes.

1a Under what circumstances?
1b either experience or the Golden Compass.
1c if the latter The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman. If the former, almost exerything.

2.Again I'm entirely unsure what you're asking.
Are you talking about robots? Or videocalls Skype/Zoom/MS Teams (Loads of SF versions before these real products of course.)
But the second part of your question seems to imply that answers are dragged out of people against their will. So something like Wonder Woman's lasso which forces people to answer? Some sort of invasive telepathy or mindreading?

3. Are we talking about instant communication over large distances?
"subwave communicators"?
"Sub-ether radios"?
The Ansible of Ursula Le Guin's Hainish books?
Various stories using quantum entanglement devices like in Stephen Donaldson's GAP series for instance.
 
For the first one, I would suggest the Greek myth of Cassandra, various references to Oracles, up to "The Minority Report." The latter was drawn from a Philip K. Dick short story and I would suggest reading his work for a lot of variations on this theme.

For the second, I suggest looking at artificial limbs and some of the advancements made in that area. There are also verbalization tools such as those used by Stephen Hawking. There are also keyboard substitutes that rely on scanning eye movement to make screen selections.

For the third, I am guessing that there are some constraints that you envision that are not explicitly contained in the question. To make someone instantly reply seems to fall under coercion. There are already many real world examples of communications over a distance as well as examples of people stopping everything to respond to a device, though the latter is more psychological than inherent in a device.
 
I recall a short story about a conflict of educational philosophy. This society had a technology in the form of floating balls that could follow children around and talk, answering any question a child asked.

Unfortunately I do not recall the title of the short story.
 
farntfar said:
So this is for an essay, you have to hand in on Monday. ;)

I find the wording of your questions very difficult and poorly defined so I'm probably not answering the question you want answering..
But here goes.

1a Under what circumstances?
1b either experience or the Golden Compass.
1c if the latter The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman. If the former, almost exerything.

2.Again I'm entirely unsure what you're asking.
Are you talking about robots? Or videocalls Skype/Zoom/MS Teams (Loads of SF versions before these real products of course.)
But the second part of your question seems to imply that answers are dragged out of people against their will. So something like Wonder Woman's lasso which forces people to answer? Some sort of invasive telepathy or mindreading?

3. Are we talking about instant communication over large distances?
"subwave communicators"?
"Sub-ether radios"?
The Ansible of Ursula Le Guin's Hainish books?
Various stories using quantum entanglement devices like in Stephen Donaldson's GAP series for instance.
Click to expand...
Then let me reword the following questions to make it clearer for you and other people:

1a. Is there a device that can find out or predict what someone will say or do to other people or things, and when that person will say or do those things to other people or things, and if so,
b. what's the name of that device?
c. and what works of fiction does it feature in?

2a. Is there a device that can speak to or do things to or for people, like a person is speaking to another person, but with or without any human input whatsoever, so one can get any answer or be told anything they want, whether the things they say or the questions they ask are positive or negative, and whether the things they want to do or find out how to do are good or bad, and if so,
b. what's the name of that device?
c. and what works of fiction does it feature in?

3a. Is there a device that allows someone to get an instant reply from another person or make someone instantly reply to them, and if so,
b. what's the name of that device?
c. and what works of fiction does it feature in?

etc.
 
Force Trainer - Wikipedia I remember seeing on "Beyond 2000" that there was some sort of neural interface for a computer where you had to produce "relaxed" brain waves for the game to progress. On House they also had a mind-reading computer that probably worked similarly.

You might want to look into predictive algorithms for question one.

I think the closest you can get to instant-reply right now is if someone has a pavlovian response to hearing their text-message sound. Truth serums are more of an inhibition-inhibitor.
 
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