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"...a market economy is essentially a genetic algorithm for solving resource allocation problems..."
- Charles Stross

Phantomatic Generator (Virtual Reality)  
  A computer-generated experience.  

What can a person connected to a phantomatic generator experience? Everything. He can climb the Alps, wander around the Moon without a spacesuit or an oxygen mask, conquer medieval towns or the North Pole while heading a committed team and wearing shining armor. He can be cheered by crowds as a marathon winner or the greatest poet of all time and receive a Nobel Prize from the hands of the Swedish king; he can love Madame de Pompadour and be loved back by her; he can enter into a duel with Iago to avenge Othello or get stabbed himself by Mafia hitmen. He can also experience enormous eagle’s wings growing on his back; he can fly and then become a fish again and spend his life on a coral reef; as a shark he can career with his mouth wide open toward his victims; he can even capture the swimmers, eat them with great relish, and digest them with gusto in a quiet corner of his underwater cave. […]

He can be a prophet, with an additional guarantee that all his prophecies will be fulfilled one-hundred percent; he can die and be resurrected many times over.

Technovelgy from Summa Technologiae, by Stanislaw Lem.
Published by Not Known in 1964
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