Legends of the Land Series
Cockayne, Steve. Legends of the Land: Wanderers and Islanders (2002), The Iron Chain (2003), The Seagull Drovers (2004). London, UK: Orbit.
Fantasy. Cited by Brian Stableford, The A to Z of Fantasy Literature / The A to Z Guide Series, No. 46, from Scarecrow Press (2009): "[...] one of its intertwined stories features Leonardo Pegasus' Multiple Empathy Machine, a kind of universal viewer. Such machines multiply, increasing their transformative and disruptive influence massively in" the later books (pp. 80-81).
From Farah Mendlesohn's "Jews on Quests" European Fantasy Conference (lightly edited; link below), our primary source for this entry:
In Steve Cockayne’s Wanderers and Islanders Trilogy, the emphasis is entirely on the construction of new knowledge through the fantastic in the first book (Wanderers and Islanders), through the construction of a memory house and of an empathy machine which replaces theatrical performance of a desired future with a more complex system of prediction, and in the second (The Iron Chain) through the development of cartography as a science which tames the magical work and puts it to service. In the final book, The Seagull Drovers, the past magic and knowledge is actively destroyed to create an industrial world. (pp. 12-13)[1]
If we understand him correctly and Stableford is correct — and he's a careful scholar — see the Empathy Machine for its name, and for the motif/trope/icon of what we have called "view screens." See also for movement from the fantastic to the mundane as "an industrial world."
RDE, finishing, with thanks to Farah Mendlesohn, 8/9Jul21