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"The immediate problem with our meat brains is that they have no back-up. We can lose the most precious information we have from one bump on the head or stroke. You want a mind system with back-up that can access other databases."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| 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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'You are who we say you are, Dr. Dakin,' Turner said.'
'It's area, and its consequent light-gathering capacity, was many times greater than any rigid mirror...'
'Tell me your torments,' the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion.
'...a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football.'
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
