Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
eBayaday Sells A View On eBay
eBayaday is an unusual art/business project that consists of twenty-five eBay auctions; the eBay listings are the artwork. The art was posted on eBay at the rate of one each day during December of 2006. eBayaday was curated by Rebekah Modrak, Aaron Ahuvia and Zackery Denfeld. Each posting was contributed by a different artist.
(View by Osman Khan)
The individual posting that really fascinated me was contributed by artist Osman Khan. It consisted of the sale of a view:
... we are providing for the first time the sale of a view (let me repeat on sale here is a view, a vista, a scene if you will... sorry no land for sale just literally a view, or rather a unique viewing angle looking at the vista will belong to you, that's right a private way of looking at the world can happily now be yours to own and yes call your own!), What you say, just a view for sale? Well if you remember the Natives Americans also once believed the land they lived on was not theirs to be bought or sold...
I was struck by the similarity to the idea of a scenedow, introduced in a 1968 short story by Bob Shaw. In the novel, a thick sheet of slow glass was left out in front of a natural scene. The light from the scene would slowly penetrate the glass, and come out the other side years later.
...A new piece was always jet black because nothing had yet come through, but one could stand the glass beside, say, a woodland lake until the scene emerged, perhaps a year later. If the glass was then removed and installed in a dismal city flat, the flat would — for that year — appear to overlook the woodland lake.
(Read more about slow glass scenedows)
Read more about modern day "slow glass" in these articles:
- Slow Light Will Speed Communications
- Light was captured in a crystal
- Slow Light 'Scenedow' Close At Hand
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/10/2007)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 1 )
Related News Stories - (" Culture ")
Switzerland May Cap Population At Ten Million
'The population of Castle Hagedorn was fixed...' - Jack Vance, 1967.
California Governor Candidate Calls For Voting By Phone
'... every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions.' John Brunner, 1975.
Chinese Hospital Tries Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron' Cosplay
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half
blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.' - Kurt Vonnegut, 1961.
A Remarkable Coincidence
'There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here...' - Arthur C. Clarke, 1953.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come
Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
