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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl

Video Wallpaper  
  Very thin, large scale display.  

The central core of the parlor was an icosahedron of display devices, a tent of their best remaining video wallpaper. It was primitive and warmly communal at the same time. From all directions, his customers would look inward at shared views.
Technovelgy from A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge.
Published by Not known in 1999
Additional resources -

Here's another brief quote:

Ezr's heads-up display went clear, and he was looking at the landers bulkheads. The wallpaper backup flickered on, but the video was some random emergency-procedures sequence.

Video wallpaper was also able to 'damp' its output if it became bright enough to cast shadows on other walls. Here's another bit:

Anne Reynolt slid in from the right, her form distorted by the perspective angle; that part of the wallpaper just couldn't handle 3-D.

Compare to smart wallpaper from Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from A Deepness in the Sky
  More Ideas and Technology by Vernor Vinge
  Tech news articles related to A Deepness in the Sky
  Tech news articles related to works by Vernor Vinge

Video Wallpaper-related news articles:
  - Roll-to-Roll Processing OLEDs And Video Wallpaper
  - Shinoda Plasma Video Wallpaper
  - Digital Daewoo Folding Screen DID-FS
  - Toshiba OLED Video Wallpaper Powered By SF
  - Philips Luminous Textile Panel Soft Cells

Articles related to Display
Transparent MicroLED Screen From Samsung
Augmented Reality Book Covers Reveal The Inner Book
TCL CSOT 17-Inch Printed OLED Scrolling Display
Looking Glass Display Good Enough For Science Fiction, Fantasy

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Science Fiction in the News

Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Predictions
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'

Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
'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?'

Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...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.'

Splendid View Of Eclipse From Orbit Visualized And Repurposed By Arthur C. Clarke
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'

Bespoke Environment Music From AIs
'Call 'em Winter Mute," said the other, making it two words.'

Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'

SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'

Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'

NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'

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