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The PSAC halts time and/or body processes for the user for a user-preset amount of time with no or very little preparation or postprocessing. While expensive, every family/individual has at least one.
Among the many uses...
- allow new parent(s) to get some rest,
- jet lag, shiftworkers,
heavy partiers resynching of sleep cycle,
- boredom relief.
It is noted of course, that suspended-animation is already in use in stories for interstellar travel, long-term one-way time-travel, and food storage. This idea is for a device that has the same penetration into society as the television or personal-computer, and that its usage is considered mundane: "Hello, you have reached Shazbot at 344-222-111111-4444-338461-396764. I'm in the tank right now and can't take your call, but if you'd like to leave a message..."
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Annotation:
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How would it allow rest? Rest is not just the absence of action, but usually includes some kind of recovery. |
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This is excellent. If you can give some clue as to
how it works, you'd be well on the way to having an
idea. |
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//How would it allow rest?//
You put the kids in it.
The downside is it might take 27 years for the offspring to
reach the biological age of 12. |
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// The downside is it might take 27 years for the offspring to reach the biological age of 12. // |
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The upside is you can leave them there indefinitely. |
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//allow rest// it doesn't, what [AC] said. |
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//how// No reference: it might be some sort of freezing, or time-dilation or whatever. I vote for superluminal neutrons personally. |
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For the first while of a child's life when it's eating sleeping puking crapping screaming without any reference to circadian rhythm, it allows the parents to occasionally (or all the time for that matter) get a good night's rest. |
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If your life consists of TV simply because there's nothing else to do, shave an hour off each day until there is something worthwhile. |
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Work downtown and able to afford your own rickshaw driver ? There's a couple commuting hours saved from staring off into space on the subway or fighting traffic. |
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Airline personnel can do layovers across timezones. Swingshift workers can simply drop into the box for 8 or 16 hours. Both without the blurry eyes that usually accompany (at least) the first day on the new shift/timezone. |
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For that matter airlines can use it in at least one direction of travel to eliminate jetlag completely for their passengers... who are also quieter on the flight. |
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Teachers facing a long summer, if they can afford the time off, can just take a couple weeks hols then plunk, into the box for a couple months. |
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ha! airlines could have box-flights that only travel west to east, all the way'round the world. Supermodels could freeze between shoots and extend their youthtime. |
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You could write it as a murder mystery. (This is assuming the device is some sort of canister-like thing) A guy dies when his PSAC turns off because there's a bullet frozen in time shot at him. The enigma is that it had to have been a suicide because the PSAC is closed and unbroken and it would be impossible for anyone to close the door on a moving bullet. |
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hmmm, would suspended animation for shorter periods of time keep you from needing sleep, or would that down-time just be transmitted to later? |
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It could mess with your sleep cycle... or it could unmess your sleep cycle. The effect of the device would be simplest described as simply stepping into a container then immediately stepping out again... I guess it'd dependon how the process was accomplished. |
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Been written, at least in a first pass form. Pretty sure the author was Spider Robinson, although I'm away from my library and can't look it up. A short story where a beleaugered housewife helps out a stranded alien and gets, among other things, a device which is able to pause people, including her husband and kids for exactly the first purpose. |
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That's Callahan's Place author, right? |
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Robinson is the Callahan author, but as it happens, I was
mis-remembering. The story is "Barter" by Lois McMaster
Bujold, 1985 original printing (unknown where), reprinted
in the anthology Dreamweavers Dillema. |
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Anybody else annoyed at R's tendency to write a good read for 400 pages, then tank it with "then they all got stoned, shared minds and solved the problem" in the last 2 pages ? |
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Another use for this device (relief of overcrowding)
was proposed by PJ
Farmer in "The sliced crosswise, only on Tuesday
world." |
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//The sliced crosswise, only on Tuesday world.//. THATs
the story name I was trying to remember. Thanks
[mouseposture] |
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I wish there were a Halfbakery for ideas based
upon the existence of some particular
technological advancement. |
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Like if we had access to another dimension that
gave everyone in the world their own habitable
planet. Or access to storage on a flat, endless,
featureless plane. |
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Or what if we could send objects back into time?
Caked on gunk? Soaking that glass casserole dish
for 150 years ought to do it. |
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Of if we had unbreakable cable, could we string
cables down from a huge geostationary rock and
store energy in orbiting horseshoes that would
grab the string and swig things up into space. |
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One guy and only one guy understands how to
make an antigravity device, and commences to
mess with people, that kind of thing. |
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