Simulation

Sylvain · Post by **Sylvain** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 3:13 am

Mmmm... Let's see... It is possible to link Eye-Fi units like Blackberries, resulting - for all practical purposes - in telepathy. A perfectly logical development, with mind-boggling sociological implications. The gap between wired and un-wired people must be rather huge. No wonder teachers have remotes!

Did Laine and Alice create their own language, or is it simply that their conversation was encrypted for privacy? We still don't know for sure on what basis the links are made.

It seems that neither Pierce nor Rhonda realised that they were in a simulation, which might mean that they are reasonable kids who don't overuse that feature and are therefore less familiar about how it feels.

I see that my suspicion about Laine having a different mix of skunk-mouse features than her sister was right. It must really be uncomfortable having those large ears cramped in a thight helmet! Are the girls twins?

Micro_Fur · Post by **Micro_Fur** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 4:54 pm

Ok, Lain and Alice are contantly linked, so wouldn't that imply that one knows what the other is thinking? And if that is true would that be like a shared key network? And if that is true someone could percivably hack the connection to someone else if they happened to think the same thing at the same time, just like Pierce and Alice did. . . .*Brain Explodes*

Micro_fur - Please Stanby, We Are Experiencing Technical Difficlties.

Cyril_Dran · Post by **Cyril_Dran** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 5:37 pm

In other news: Despite the creepy mind link, those two are certainly cute either way. If you like that kind of thing, like me.

Cinni · Post by **Cinni** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 7:58 pm

Despite the creepy mind link?

I rather like that. It's warped. And potentially brain-meltingly kinky, if it should come to that, though we do not know enough about them to say one way or the other on that front.

Cin

Micro_Fur · Post by **Micro_Fur** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 8:37 pm

Cinni, your comment suddenly remided me of that one scene in "Demolition Man", now that I managed to piece my back together I suddenly want to have one of those Eye-Fi implants. I mean imagine being able to have virtual sex with your partner without the need for them to be physicaly there, assuming that all sensory feedback is output from the implant there would be no real difference. Which reminds me, to quote Saundra "Oo, the things I'll do to you. . . oh, such NAUGHTY things. . . Naughty, bad, WICKED things. . ." *whimper/pout* I really want one now, and it's all your fault Cinni!

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 7:36 am

I'm glad you're enjoying the character designs for Alice and Lain. I wanted to blend Amanda and Calvin's features into a pleasing amalgam that still made it obvious to the hard-core Umlauters that these are Amanda and Cal's kids.

I don't think it'll ever really come up, so I'll let this slip on the forum: the three circles above Alice's right eye are LEDs. They're clear-capped (not clouded) tri-anodic devices that have red, blue, and green diodes connected to analog linear-in-dB controls so that she can essentially "set" them to any color or intensity from that dull glow you get when you barely run leakage current to that bright "gawd isn't that thing gonna burn out" color you get at 1.2 volts.

As for more general, social stuff, the functionality of the Eye-Fi hardware offers a fairly limited VR experience; you can overlay to varying opacity the display over your visual cortex or shunt it into "minds eye" mode where you "see" it in some unmapped-in-our-time biological frame buffer of the brain. Social result: having an eye-fi in your head is like having an always-on always-ready laptop with broadband access, but it doesn't exactly make you superhuman. It does not grant special reflexes, or actually make you smarter (although having MATLAB installed can certainly make you SEEM smarter), and can actually act as a distraction, since your copy of Starcraft II (released in 2038) is actually CLOSER than your Math book.

Sylvain · Post by **Sylvain** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 12:18 pm

The LED implants could also be interesting if they are connected to the Eye-Fi and set to reflect Alice's mood! Quick red flashes when she gets excited or angry, steady blue if she wants to give you the cold shoulder...

Kesh · Post by **Kesh** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 1:27 pm

allan_ecker wrote:I'm glad you're enjoying the character designs for Alice and Lain. I wanted to blend Amanda and Calvin's features into a pleasing amalgam that still made it obvious to the hard-core Umlauters that these are Amanda and Cal's kids.

I was wondering about that. Nifty. n.n

I don't think it'll ever really come up, so I'll let this slip on the forum: the three circles above Alice's right eye are LEDs. They're clear-capped (not clouded) tri-anodic devices that have red, blue, and green diodes connected to analog linear-in-dB controls so that she can essentially "set" them to any color or intensity from that dull glow you get when you barely run leakage current to that bright "gawd isn't that thing gonna burn out" color you get at 1.2 volts.

... Alan, that is the coolest body mod I've ever seen written down. That's so going into my next Shadowrun character.

As for more general, social stuff, the functionality of the Eye-Fi hardware offers a fairly limited VR experience; you can overlay to varying opacity the display over your visual cortex or shunt it into "minds eye" mode where you "see" it in some unmapped-in-our-time biological frame buffer of the brain. Social result: having an eye-fi in your head is like having an always-on always-ready laptop with broadband access, but it doesn't exactly make you superhuman. It does not grant special reflexes, or actually make you smarter (although having MATLAB installed can certainly make you SEEM smarter), and can actually act as a distraction, since your copy of Starcraft II (released in 2038) is actually CLOSER than your Math book.

Which is kinda like how the Augmented Reality in SR works. Nifty. I have a feeling systems like that honestly will be real in the next 50-100 years (depending on the safety protocols for the interface).

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 2:50 pm

...

Sometimes I use my Shadowrun v2.0 book for help with tech in UH2.

Alice does lots of things with her LEDs, but she's not allowed to blink them in class because of the dress code.

Andrick · Post by **Andrick** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 9:59 am

And to think that the technology for Shadowrun was supposed to show an active retardation and stagnation employed against innovation as a means of making the game's dysfunctional dark age more oppressive; the world of Shadowrun was nowhere near what it should have technologically achieved.

As for the LED thing, Allan, it'll come up when you make the obligatory color comic. It's not just a clich

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:12 pm

THAT is a very good (and subtle) point, Andrick.

I'm trying to be careful in my world building; some of my predictions may seem a bit conservative in that light. Also, when I said I was looking at Shadowrun I was referring more to character archetypes than technology.

(Incidentially, I'm taking your relative silence over the past week or so as approval of the current storytelling.

)

Alfador · Post by **Alfador** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 5:27 am

allan_ecker wrote:I'm glad you're enjoying the character designs for Alice and Lain. I wanted to blend Amanda and Calvin's features into a pleasing amalgam that still made it obvious to the hard-core Umlauters that these are Amanda and Cal's kids.

I don't think it'll ever really come up, so I'll let this slip on the forum: the three circles above Alice's right eye are LEDs. They're clear-capped (not clouded) tri-anodic devices that have red, blue, and green diodes connected to analog linear-in-dB controls so that she can essentially "set" them to any color or intensity from that dull glow you get when you barely run leakage current to that bright "gawd isn't that thing gonna burn out" color you get at 1.2 volts.

As for more general, social stuff, the functionality of the Eye-Fi hardware offers a fairly limited VR experience; you can overlay to varying opacity the display over your visual cortex or shunt it into "minds eye" mode where you "see" it in some unmapped-in-our-time biological frame buffer of the brain. Social result: having an eye-fi in your head is like having an always-on always-ready laptop with broadband access, but it doesn't exactly make you superhuman. It does not grant special reflexes, or actually make you smarter (although having MATLAB installed can certainly make you SEEM smarter), and can actually act as a distraction, since your copy of Starcraft II (released in 2038) is actually CLOSER than your Math book.

Bah! What do I need a Math book for? When every mathematics website in the world is as close as...ooo, Starcraft II...

Andrick · Post by **Andrick** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 9:03 am

Kinda' makes one wonder what would happen if some malcontents used devices which would amplify signals (to burn out sensitive receivers) or EMI producing devices in metropolitan areas. Basically, what's happening in the comic is tame by comparison.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 11:12 am

These are pretty low-power devices; the isolation between the computing core and the output devices is pretty sturdy, so I think the Worst Possible Thing you could do to someone is create the simultaneous effect of a blinding, flashing lightshow accompanied by a cacophanous roar of chalkboards being scratched with farming tools. I'm not saying it couldn't be fatal if you were driving, but it's not really plausible to just flip a switch and kill someone walking down the street.

Actually, none of the stuff going on here should be plausible, either...

Andrick · Post by **Andrick** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 12:50 pm

As has been the case with my posts in this forum, that was not quite what I was alluding to, Allan. From the standpoint I see of your work, technology has become a necessity of functionality. Malcontents can wreak havoc with simplistic devices that do not maim or murder people through their technology so much as irk or annoy them. Devices that introduce electro-magnetic interference will cut off all but the most high-powered of signal communications while introducing "noise" into any device not properly shielded from such attacks (which is just about every civilian electronic device made post vacuum tube technology). Signal amplifiers simply would burn out receivers never designed to handle the heightened amplitude of incoming signals, thusly eliminating the reception feature of devices if not the full transceiver functions. The only systems that could withstand such aggressive attacks would be expensive and bulky compared to the less rugged versions.

In and of itself, these attacks would only cause electronics devices to not work or not work properly. What that means to a society which is more technology (& energy) dependent than we are today may have frightening implications. Good thing this is the angst-free comic so we don't have to worry about such things.

Just so we're clear, I'm not looking for justification in the comic nor do I want to see something inserted into the comic addressing these issues. I'm just sayin'...

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 5:19 pm

Noted!

I think what threw me was the "makes this look tame" line; as far as I'm concerned, a school-wide total blackout is pretty darn troublesome.

Don't worry about throwing me into a tizzy of story-modification with a few comments; I spent a good lot of time debating whether it was okay to include some strips recently which I knew wouldn't have occurred to me without the forum. I guard against overcorrections.

But thank you for caring.