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"I think we're still on that topic, still trying to figure out what computers are, how they change us, why we use them."
- Neal Stephenson
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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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Ersatz Window-related
news articles:
- Winscape Plasma Monitor Windows
- LiquidView Ersatz Windows, ala Philip K. Dick
| Transparent 4K OLED Wireless TV From LG |
| DOTPad Braille Device Offers Live Access |
| Transparent MicroLED Screen From Samsung |
| Augmented Reality Book Covers Reveal The Inner Book |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
