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Itty Bitty Bigger World - Death
Sep. 3rd, 2015 05:26 pmThere are many, many things that suck about Virtual Reality, or VR – although it is fundamental to participating in what we optimistically call civilization in the mid 21st century.
The kids nowadays, and many professionals in various fields that handle a lot of data, use direct neural inputs whenever they want to go into Virtual Reality. Direct neural inputs hook up your own nervous system as an extension of the computers you are interfacing with. This could be an aerodyne pilot controlling her craft, a surgeon running a neurosurgical console (ironically enough), or an artist with a media paintbrush. This could also be surfing the Net, or accessing any computer willing to talk to you, which in the Information Age is virtually all of them.
The risk of direct neural inputs – although the final link is wireless, typically short range modulated EM – is that the connection is two way. For example, most surgeons rig the console so that any undesirable effects they have on the patient are experienced directly _by the surgeon_ as agonizing pain. (What better way to ensure that you are careful where you cut?) An aerodyne pilot may want to experience a fuel shortage as hunger pangs, or a life support system issue as raging thirst. On the net, you can find yourself briefly but involuntarily immersed in an all-senses advertisement for Angolan fast food or a participant re-enactment drama in Georgia (either one), and have to jack out and restart. Usually just a nuisance, like spam was in the oughts and teens – but awkward if you are busy doing something else.
This can also be done less intrusively by induction, which requires wearing a headband or other equipment that transmits through the skin to the nerves – or through an implanted inductive interface, typically known as smartware, which is worn internally but does not have direct neural contact. The advantage is an additional cut-out between your weak, fallible nervous system and the information technology that pervades our arcology, our society and our planet.
If you are an elderly old fart or especially paranoid, you may settle for immersive VR, which requires goggles and earbuds to make it seem as though – but still using your eyes and ears instead of modulated nerve inputs to same. When the fireboat crew had EMP'd my smartware, I'd borrowed a pair of smart goggles and immediately resumed VR functionality – a trick most kids nowadays would have no idea how to do, or to use if they did. If you are doing something especially dangerous in VR (such as investigating VR crime) or real life (such as arresting people), you may not want direct neural inputs or even induction to briefly but catastrophically ruin your day. If the VR is especially munged, just rip the goggles off or take out the contacts! You're out of VR – but you're OUT of VR.
My physical self was lying in a complex assemblage of machinery called a 'hospital bed' only for convenience. In the effort to save my life, a team of UC Stanford neurosurgeons had jumped right past re-enabling my inductive smartware, but installed direct neural inputs – much in the same way that paramedics a century ago would attach electroconductive electrodes first to a patient's chest, then to a oscilloscope waveform cathode-ray tube monitor.
The problem is that the Mastermind had used the direct neural input to launch a VR chat application, that put me on a tropical beach with a drink at my right hand, and him adjacent. He could have just as easily told my blood vessels to all relax at once and put me in hypovolemic shock – told my heart to go into overload and force a stroke – or he could get all gross and tell the hospital bed to yank my central aortic line or otherwise misuse any of a dozen other connections or lasers or radiation knives, and cause me to die quickly in a little, some or quite horrible pain. Dying slowly would not be an option, as it would give UC Stanford time to 1) detect the hacking 2) kick him out of their system and 3) save my life, with portable ROM chipped and therefore unhackable equipment. He'd only have a few seconds once external monitoring detected the misuse of medical accesses, so he'd have to act fast.
Two cent answer: the Mastermind's got a gun to my head, and we already know not only that he's a mass murderer, but he's thinking about enslaving or killing everybody.
I'd already tried calling for help. The VR app wouldn't let me.
I took a good look at the VR emulation my potential killer was choosing to wear. Dapper older man, salt and pepper hair and beard, all neatly trimmed. Goofy engaging face, presently with a mild grin. Wearing a custom tailored, expensive (if it were not merely pixels) gray suit with what I would have once called a “power tie” - red. He'd already introduced himself, gotten the first word in.
My turn.
“The prosthetic feline gambols skywards,” I said. “Oh, sorry, calibration error. Why am I still breathing?”
He skipped right past the nonsense phrase, ignoring it to begin the negotiation he had planned. He leaned in and spread his arms slightly. Sales pitch.
“You are far more useful to me alive than dead. But you have also been very irritating. I was not ready for public attention at this point in my schedule.”
Control freak. Got it.
“Schedule for what? Taking over the world, or killing everyone?”
“No difference. Killing everyone who will not accept my benign tyranny. Which brings us back to you, Alan Anderson, and your personal fate. Join me, or die.”
I took time for one regret. I briefly visualized the blue sky over the Pacific Ocean, a sunset that I had not taken the time to see last night – and would never see again.
“Die,” I said, and willed a neurofeedback command.
No matter how much VR you laden a person with, no matter how much you take over his eyes and ears and skin and tissue, you can't get at the link between brain and voluntary nerves without physically interfering with those nerves.
My heart - in obedience to my last order - stopped.
The kids nowadays, and many professionals in various fields that handle a lot of data, use direct neural inputs whenever they want to go into Virtual Reality. Direct neural inputs hook up your own nervous system as an extension of the computers you are interfacing with. This could be an aerodyne pilot controlling her craft, a surgeon running a neurosurgical console (ironically enough), or an artist with a media paintbrush. This could also be surfing the Net, or accessing any computer willing to talk to you, which in the Information Age is virtually all of them.
The risk of direct neural inputs – although the final link is wireless, typically short range modulated EM – is that the connection is two way. For example, most surgeons rig the console so that any undesirable effects they have on the patient are experienced directly _by the surgeon_ as agonizing pain. (What better way to ensure that you are careful where you cut?) An aerodyne pilot may want to experience a fuel shortage as hunger pangs, or a life support system issue as raging thirst. On the net, you can find yourself briefly but involuntarily immersed in an all-senses advertisement for Angolan fast food or a participant re-enactment drama in Georgia (either one), and have to jack out and restart. Usually just a nuisance, like spam was in the oughts and teens – but awkward if you are busy doing something else.
This can also be done less intrusively by induction, which requires wearing a headband or other equipment that transmits through the skin to the nerves – or through an implanted inductive interface, typically known as smartware, which is worn internally but does not have direct neural contact. The advantage is an additional cut-out between your weak, fallible nervous system and the information technology that pervades our arcology, our society and our planet.
If you are an elderly old fart or especially paranoid, you may settle for immersive VR, which requires goggles and earbuds to make it seem as though – but still using your eyes and ears instead of modulated nerve inputs to same. When the fireboat crew had EMP'd my smartware, I'd borrowed a pair of smart goggles and immediately resumed VR functionality – a trick most kids nowadays would have no idea how to do, or to use if they did. If you are doing something especially dangerous in VR (such as investigating VR crime) or real life (such as arresting people), you may not want direct neural inputs or even induction to briefly but catastrophically ruin your day. If the VR is especially munged, just rip the goggles off or take out the contacts! You're out of VR – but you're OUT of VR.
My physical self was lying in a complex assemblage of machinery called a 'hospital bed' only for convenience. In the effort to save my life, a team of UC Stanford neurosurgeons had jumped right past re-enabling my inductive smartware, but installed direct neural inputs – much in the same way that paramedics a century ago would attach electroconductive electrodes first to a patient's chest, then to a oscilloscope waveform cathode-ray tube monitor.
The problem is that the Mastermind had used the direct neural input to launch a VR chat application, that put me on a tropical beach with a drink at my right hand, and him adjacent. He could have just as easily told my blood vessels to all relax at once and put me in hypovolemic shock – told my heart to go into overload and force a stroke – or he could get all gross and tell the hospital bed to yank my central aortic line or otherwise misuse any of a dozen other connections or lasers or radiation knives, and cause me to die quickly in a little, some or quite horrible pain. Dying slowly would not be an option, as it would give UC Stanford time to 1) detect the hacking 2) kick him out of their system and 3) save my life, with portable ROM chipped and therefore unhackable equipment. He'd only have a few seconds once external monitoring detected the misuse of medical accesses, so he'd have to act fast.
Two cent answer: the Mastermind's got a gun to my head, and we already know not only that he's a mass murderer, but he's thinking about enslaving or killing everybody.
I'd already tried calling for help. The VR app wouldn't let me.
I took a good look at the VR emulation my potential killer was choosing to wear. Dapper older man, salt and pepper hair and beard, all neatly trimmed. Goofy engaging face, presently with a mild grin. Wearing a custom tailored, expensive (if it were not merely pixels) gray suit with what I would have once called a “power tie” - red. He'd already introduced himself, gotten the first word in.
My turn.
“The prosthetic feline gambols skywards,” I said. “Oh, sorry, calibration error. Why am I still breathing?”
He skipped right past the nonsense phrase, ignoring it to begin the negotiation he had planned. He leaned in and spread his arms slightly. Sales pitch.
“You are far more useful to me alive than dead. But you have also been very irritating. I was not ready for public attention at this point in my schedule.”
Control freak. Got it.
“Schedule for what? Taking over the world, or killing everyone?”
“No difference. Killing everyone who will not accept my benign tyranny. Which brings us back to you, Alan Anderson, and your personal fate. Join me, or die.”
I took time for one regret. I briefly visualized the blue sky over the Pacific Ocean, a sunset that I had not taken the time to see last night – and would never see again.
“Die,” I said, and willed a neurofeedback command.
No matter how much VR you laden a person with, no matter how much you take over his eyes and ears and skin and tissue, you can't get at the link between brain and voluntary nerves without physically interfering with those nerves.
My heart - in obedience to my last order - stopped.
