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"...a market economy is essentially a genetic algorithm for solving resource allocation problems..."
- Charles Stross

Magnetically Floating Furniture  
  Furniture that is suspended at the proper height using magnetic forces.  

Short legs, long legs - people differ. How can you make sure that furniture is at the right height?

The office was spookily furnished, since none of the furniture had legs. Everything was suspended magnetically at the proper height. The tables and the desk and the bar and the couches were floating slabs. The chairs were tilted, floating bowls. And most eerie of all, pencils and pads were scattered at random through the air, ready to be snatched by anyone who had an idea worth writing down.
Technovelgy from The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr..
Published by Dell in 1959
Additional resources -

In the novel, one of the characters opines that this kind of furniture should "see like hotcakes." Not so.

"Sitting on an American Levitation couch is harder than standing up in a birchbark canoe," said Fern dryly.

Thanks to Mike Billa for submitting this item.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Sirens of Titan
  More Ideas and Technology by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  Tech news articles related to The Sirens of Titan
  Tech news articles related to works by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Magnetically Floating Furniture-related news articles:
  - Levitating Bed Vonnegut's Future Now
  - Hoverit Lounger Suspended Vonnegut Dream
  - Hovering Levi-Table

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A Remarkable Coincidence

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