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"None of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| Ersatz Window | ||
| A display device used in a room without an actual view of the outside; it shows a projection of a real scene. |
After a day of useless work, Joe Fernwright trudged back to a location that he referred to with the word "home."
| "Home" consisted of a room on a subsurface level of a huge apartment building. Once, the Jiffi-View Company of greater Cleveland came by every six months and created a 3D projection, animated, of a view of Carmel, California. This "view" filled his room's "window," or ersatz window. However, of late, due to his bad financial situation he had given up trying to imagine that he lived on a great hill with a view of the sea and towering redwoods; he had become content - or rather resigned - to face blank, inert black glass. |
| Technovelgy from Galactic Pot-Healer,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Berkley Publishing in 1969 Additional resources -
|
This device required another component to be fully functional; see the entry for psycho-lease encephalic gadget.
Compare to Robert Heinlein's simulacrum window from Tunnel in the Sky (1955), the sky ceiling from the 1961 novel Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem and the window wavelength from the 1969 novel Super-Toys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss.
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Tech news articles related to Galactic Pot-Healer
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Ersatz Window-related
news articles:
- Winscape Plasma Monitor Windows
- LiquidView Ersatz Windows, ala Philip K. Dick
| Did Frank Herbert Predict Bistable Displays Like E-Ink? |
| I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display |
| Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large |
| iPhone Air Fulfils Jobs' Promise From 2007 - A Giant Screen! |
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
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'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
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'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
