Materialization
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Materialization is the name of several things:
- Materialization (parapsychology), a concept, in parapsychology, is the creation or appearance of matter from unknown sources
- In science fiction, materialization is an action associated with several plot devices involving energy to matter conversion such as:
- teleportation (in which two theorized stages are de-materialization and re-materialization), or
- Star Trek's replicators, said to able to materialize food etc., or
- the holodeck from the same series, which can even materialize a fantasy partner.
- In computing, it is sometimes used as a synonym for instantiation, which itself has several concrete meanings.
- In relational databases, it can refer to creating materialized views.
- Or more generally, any form of storing the results of a precomputation.
- A specific design pattern in object-oriented programming.
- The process of becoming more materialist.
- The process of creating an embodiment of an idea, for example creating a prototype.
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