PhilipDick
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Flow my tears, the newly-built robotic head of Philip K. Dick said
Yes, this is definitely a post (and video!) about a hand-built, robotic head of author Philip K. Dick, who died in 1982, leaving the world a trove of literature which could be turned into films like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly. Sadly, he did not leave a robotic head of himself. It may surprise you to find out that this is actually not even the first robotic head of Philip K. Dick, it's apparently the second. This newly-built robo-PKD is meant to replace one that was famously lost in 2006, and was built by Hanson Robotics and Dutch public broadcasters VPRO. The video after the break is creepy and amazing, but it's nothing compared to the VALIS Trilogy.
Philip K. Dick's estate lawyers up, says Nexus One name is 'clear infringement'
We'd been hearing that Philip K. Dick's estate wasn't too pleased about Google's riff on the Nexus-6 name from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner for the Nexus One, and now it looks like they're doing something about it -- Phil's daughter Isa told the Wall Street Journal that the name is a "clear infringement of our intellectual-property rights" and that their lawyers are "dealing head-to-head" with the situation. We're not exactly sure what that means: unlike George Lucas and the Droid trademark, Dick's estate doesn't have a trademark on the Nexus name -- and even if it did, we're not sure consumers would somehow be confused into thinking there was some association between Dick and Google. That said, we're pretty sure the smart move for Google is to just cut a check and earn some feel-good PR here, but we'll see what happens.
