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"The world is really so surreal these days that it's necessary for us to blunt it somehow in order to stay sane. The artist functions to short-circuit the buffering mechanism, so that people can occasionally perceive the weirdness of things as they are."
- William Gibson
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| Selectacol | ||
| A device that automates the interior design process, providing a choice of color schemes for a roomful of furniture. |
Another great sixties kind-of-name. But an interesting concept; it's hard to see how it could be implemented, unless you used basically white or neutral colors and then changed the light color.
If you long for a selectacol, but are unwilling to wait for automatic decorating, find tips at The Sheffield School of Interior Design.
| Orne glanced around at the Bullone guest room: low-key furnishings with an old-fashioned selectacol for change of color scheme. A polawindow looked out onto an oval swimming pool. The glass had been muted to dark blue. This imparted a moonlit appearance to the view outside. |
| Technovelgy from The Godmakers,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Berkley Medallion in 1972 Additional resources -
|
In the novel, Lewis Orne is a person with exceptional, undiscovered abilities. One of the key themes explored in the book is the idea of free will - and whether or not people should be allowed to make choices.
The notion of being able to instantly transform your home into any of a set of interior design schemes also reveals the nature of the people who live in the house. They are also capable of transforming themselves over time to incorporate various political "colors" and schemes.
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'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
