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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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| 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.
Thanks to Mike Billa for submitting this item.
"Sitting on an American Levitation couch is harder than standing up in a birchbark canoe," said Fern dryly.
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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
| Robot Preachers Found To Undermine Religious Commitment |
| Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth? |
| Splendid View Of Eclipse From Orbit Visualized And Repurposed By Arthur C. Clarke |
| SensorWake Scent-Based Alarm Clock |
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Science Fiction
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'A human brain snugly encased in a transparent skull-shaped receptacle.'
'The actuating mechanism that should have operated by the imprint of her image on the telephoto cell...'
'The only real cost was in the plastic balloon that guided the growth of the coral and enclosed the coral's special air-borne food.'
'The border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
'We made a crude , small cell and were delighted - and, I admit, somewhat surprised - to find it worked.'
'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'The clothes and jewelery drew their tiny power requirements from her movements.'
