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Every Device Is a Swiss Army Knife: Difference between revisions

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Every Device Is a Swiss Army Knife (view source)

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== [[Literature]] ==
* A [[Stanislaw Lem]] short story about rival companies making more and more complex [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1981/11/30/1981_11_30_044_TNY_CARDS_000332469 washing machines].
* Subverted in [[Larry Niven]]'s short story "[http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soft_Weapon:The Soft Weapon|The Soft Weapon]]". Archeologists find a weapon from a [[Precursors|precursor race]] that has multiple functions. The heroes eventually realize that this weapon is much too complicated for front-line troops, so it must be a spy's weapon. They then trick the villains into activating its [[Self-Destruct Mechanism]].
* Obligatory ''[[Discworld]]'' example: the Lancrastian Army Knife in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Carpe Jugulum|Carpe Jugulum]]'', which has a number of strange and metaphysical features such as the Device for Ascerting the Truth of a Given Statement and the Attachment for Winning Ontological Arguments. There's ''probably'' a <ref> which will, by the way, win an ontological argument in a pretty permanent way</ref> in there somewhere as well...
** A Swiss Army Knife with an alethiometer attachment sounds pretty useful, actually.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'': The Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver. It can (of course) unlock anything but a deadlock and wooden structures, it can scan for nearly anything, and it can do all kinds of hacking with its psychic interface. It cannot, however, triplicate the flammability of port.
* "Globals" in ''[[Earth: Final Conflict]]'' were a spot-on prediction of smart phones from back in the mid-nineties. Looking at the way the characters use them (like pocket sized laptops), they could easily be iPhones or Droids. They even have a camera function.
* In the ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]]'' universe, the deflector dish's role is to push particles and small objects out of the way so they don't collide with the ship at warp speed. Throughout ''[[Star Trek Voyager (TV)|Voyager]]'', however, the deflector dish was somehow "reconfigured" to do just about anything, becoming a common [[Deus Ex Machina]].
** On a smaller nature was the Starfleet Tricorder, essentially an iPod that did anything the plot demanded. Except, oddly enough, be a communicator.
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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Every Device Is A Swiss Army Knife]]
[[Category:Trope]]
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