Bring Back the 80's!

Taking Geek to it's logical extreme

So I have considered, for a long time, the possibility of becoming a cyborg. What if you could implant certain electronic facilities directly into your brain? Or perhaps into your body? You could be like the six million dollar man, or a new kind of Human Calculator.

Now I've never respected my physical capabilities from the start so I am way more interested in the mental side of this. I would love to plug a computer into my head some how so that I will never have to worry about "remembering" something complex anymore.. no more writing down numbers, not remembering what name goes with a face.. no more worrying about keeping track of appointments or knowing what time it is when your blasted watch is broken. Sure, I would still seriously have to battle the portable power supply war, but then there would only be one front. My "life force" is either operational or it's not, and when it's not I can justify openning up a whole can of whoop ass on the situation. :)

For once in my life I could be on top of things. I could prioritize things. An "electronic calendar" could be useful for a change because it would truly always be available to enter things into and to consult. I would know if I am taxing my professional resources or double-booking — I could keep an inventory for my household and/or for whatever business I work for and never run out of supplies. I could do complex math at the speed of light. I could play solitaire when I was bored without anyone being the wiser.

Over time, my ideas for implementing this dream have become more and more humble, and more and more realistic. Tonight, I have officially even disbanded from my plans anything involving surgery. I figure — instead of using experimental "neural interconnects" or what have you and discovering a way to draw juice from the human body's bioelectric field — I'll make some really cool finger gloves for a chord keyboard and mouse and make a helmet for the display.

I'll put the laptop components (perhaps more than one CPU/unit) into a backpack, and equip myself with one of them bedouin solar panel doodads designed to drape over a backpack and provide sufficient juice for running your average laptop. My "backtops" ought to conserve on resources enough to fit within such a footprint, and I can "afford" (insomuch as weight) to have some beefy batteries inside the backpack. Hey, I'm no soldier, but I can hike around with 10-15 lbs worth of shiz :)

I would have a few USB ports handy for jacking into shiz, an ethernet port for when I'm not in a wirelessly endowed area (and where would such a place be nowadays? ;) One day soon I might even be able to equip with WiMAX and have serious network connectivity from practically any location.

Also, as a programmer, I would appreciate the opportunity to be that much more invested in the interfaces I choose to use. I might suddenly have the spare resources to become more involved in fabricating the tools I would suddenly become more dependent on.. eg, I could work to design things while walking to/from work (a lot more walking would get done since I couldn't drive and compute easily and couldn't get sun-juice from inside a car, so it would improve my health too ;) waiting for anything else, a print job to spool, meeting someone for coffee, (yeah, no, I don't drink coffee lol) you get the idea.

So, for a change I might decide not to settle for Windows. I might assist some Unix distribution in making kernel modifications which allow administrators to reduce the target CPU utilization for times when you want to conserve on power or heat production by sacrificing performance. I might help to optimize certain windowmakers for faster operation so that I don't have to wait another half-second every time I want to draw a window. I might port 3d Clipboard to another OS ;)

The big question mark, however, is of course.. how will a society that already despises geeks react to a cyborg who would so very much look like either a cyborg or a serious spaz? Helmet, shiney backpack, fingers twitching chaotically, appears to see things and be excited about things that others can't see.. married to such technology could someone survive a job interview? Walk down the street? avoid a mugging?

I am probably the only person I know of who would actually risk such further social alienation just to find out.

Posted by jesse at October 11, 2004 01:57 AM