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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts

Three Generation Work (Century Piece)  
  An artwork created by three consecutive generations of artists, in exactly one century.  

The two sat at a table of burnished lignum vitae, between them a centerpiece of carved malachite which Magnus Ridolph recognized as a Three-Generation Work from the Golwana coast of the planet Mugh - a product of father, son and son's son, toiled over a hundred years to the minute.*

(The catalogue of Pomukka Dhen, last of the Golwana emperors, listed seven thousand Century pieces, 136 Millennium pieces and fourteen Ten-Thousand Year pieces. A rumor had reached Magnus Ridolph of a Hundred-Thousand Year work nearing completion in the Backlands, a gigantic carved tourmaline.)

Technovelgy from The Sub-Standard Sardines, by Jack Vance.
Published by Startling Stories in 1949
Additional resources -

Compare to the Book of the Kalends from Galactic Pot-Healer (1969) by Philip K. Dick and the Darkdawn City from Dying of the Light (1977) by George RR Martin

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  More Ideas and Technology from The Sub-Standard Sardines
  More Ideas and Technology by Jack Vance
  Tech news articles related to The Sub-Standard Sardines
  Tech news articles related to works by Jack Vance

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Science Fiction in the 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.'

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'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...'

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