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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes."
- Larry Niven

Ersatz Window  
  A display device used in a room without an actual view of the outside; it shows a projection of a real scene.  

After a day of useless work, Joe Fernwright trudged back to a location that he referred to with the word "home."

"Home" consisted of a room on a subsurface level of a huge apartment building. Once, the Jiffi-View Company of greater Cleveland came by every six months and created a 3D projection, animated, of a view of Carmel, California. This "view" filled his room's "window," or ersatz window. However, of late, due to his bad financial situation he had given up trying to imagine that he lived on a great hill with a view of the sea and towering redwoods; he had become content - or rather resigned - to face blank, inert black glass.
Technovelgy from Galactic Pot-Healer, by Philip K. Dick.
Published by Berkley Publishing in 1969
Additional resources -

This device required another component to be fully functional; see the entry for psycho-lease encephalic gadget.

Compare to Robert Heinlein's simulacrum window from Tunnel in the Sky (1955), the sky ceiling from the 1961 novel Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem and the window wavelength from the 1969 novel Super-Toys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Galactic Pot-Healer
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip K. Dick
  Tech news articles related to Galactic Pot-Healer
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick

Ersatz Window-related news articles:
  - Winscape Plasma Monitor Windows
  - LiquidView Ersatz Windows, ala Philip K. Dick

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DOTPad Braille Device Offers Live Access
Transparent MicroLED Screen From Samsung
Augmented Reality Book Covers Reveal The Inner Book

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