Word: robots
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...treaty. The U.S. has not pressed the issue. For one thing, the Defense Department is itself considering using reactors to power laser and particle-beam weapons that may eventually be deployed in space. Also, NASA has already sent nuclear power packs to the moon and uses them regularly on robot spacecraft to the outer planets, like the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn and beyond. (Reason: sunlight is too weak to be tapped as an energy source...
...Third World is more uncertain. Some experts argue that computers will, if anything, widen the gap between haves and havenots. But the prophets of high technology believe the computer is so cheap and so powerful that it could enable underdeveloped nations to bypass the whole industrial revolution. While robot factories could fill the need for manufactured goods, the microprocessor would create myriad new industries, and an international computer network could bring important agricultural and medical information to even the most remote villages. "What networks of railroads, highways and canals were in another age, networks of telecommunications, information and computerization...
Just as the vast powers of the personal computer can be vastly multiplied by plugging it into an information network, they can be extended in all directions by attaching the mechanical brain to sensors, mechanical arms and other robotic devices. Robots are already at work in a large variety of dull, dirty or dangerous jobs: painting automobiles on assembly lines and transporting containers of plutonium without being harmed by radiation. Because a computerized robot is so easy to reprogram, some experts foresee drastic changes in the way manufacturing work is done: toward customization, away from assembly-line standards. When...
...clear? Those who think so are called "computer literate," which is synonymous with young, intelligent and employable; everybody else is the opposite. Any new technology requires its technical terms, of course, but computerese also reaches out with robot arms to seize ordinary words and twist them to its own syntactical purposes. The most striking example is the forced conversion of nouns into verbs. The computer-literate person has learned to access, to format, to interface. Anyone who objects to such jargon is, to the computer literate, not merely uninformed but bletcherous...
...next project, Gary wants to get his brother hooked up to a robot arm. "Rob can roam around the satellites thousands of miles away," says Gary, "but he still can't pour himself...