A British scientist claims to be the first person infected with a computer virus. Dr. Mark Gasson of the University of Reading in the UK implanted himself with an RFID tag similar to the type used to identify animals, and then infected the tag with a computer virus.
"This technology has really developed over the last five or ten years. And now we should consider these devices to be like little computers that can store information, manipulate information and perform computations. So when we are implanting this type of device we are implanting a miniature computer... But with these advances in technology come new risks.
What I can do is [add to the existing information on the chip] a computer virus. So what this allows the chip to do is, when the chip is sensed by another computer, the chip infects the computer with the virus."
Science fiction readers recall that in Snow Crash, the 1992 novel by Neal Stephenson, a virus called Snow Crash is created that is both a mind-altering virus in the real world and a computer virus in the virtual world (the Metaverse).
"I don't see the connection between David's computer having a crash and you calling an ambulance..."
"...It was flashing up a large amount of digital information, in binary form. That digital information was going straight into Da5id's optic nerve..."
"Da5id's not a computer. He can't read binary code."
"He's a hacker... That ability is firm-wired into the deep structures of his brain. So he's susceptible to that form of information... A metavirus.
Nanowire Memristor Networks Form 'Brains'
'He had constructed ... a brain, of metal... whose atomic structure he claimed was analogous to the atomic structure of a living brain.'- Edmond Hamilton, 1926.
US Census Will Be Online In 2020
'Most would be in English, but some would be in Spanish, some in Amerind languages, some in Chinese...'- John Brunner, 1975.
Wireless Brain-Computer Interface
'I used my implant to tell MILLIE [a mainframe computer] what we wanted and she took care of it," Art said.'- Pournelle and Niven, 1981.
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Sky City's 220 Stories Are Go
'It rested among green parklands and... stood in total isolation, a glittering block of whites and flashing windows dotted with colors.'
Robo-Raven Flapping Wing Robot Bird
'When he had first built them, they had been crude indeed, flying mechanisms with little more than a reflex-response unit.'