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"On-line gaming environments are completely different things... Essentially it's massive global role-playing."
- Peter Watts
 |
| Microsoft | ||
| A small piece of firmware inserted into the brain that provides data on a particular subject, or special features, for the user. |
One of the key concepts introduced in Neuromancer is the idea of a microsoft, a small piece of electronics that is inserted into a socket placed in your brain. In the novel, it is implied that this practice is new, edgy - kind of like multiple body piercings in the late 1990's.
| Her destination was one of the dubious software rental complexes that lined Memory Lane... The clientele were young, few of them out of their teens. They all seemed to have carbon sockets planted behind the left ear, but she didn't focus on them. The counters that fronted the booths displayed hundreds of slivers of microsoft, angular fragments of colored silicon mounted under oblong transparent bubbles on squares of white cardboard ... Behind [one] counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space, a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear. "Larry, you in, man?" She positioned herself in front of him. The boy's eyes focused. He sat up in his chair and pried a bright magenta splinter from his socket with a dirty thumbnail. |
| From Neuromancer,
by William Gibson. Published by Phantasia Press in 1984 Additional resources -
|
Throughout this novel, and the ones that followed, Gibson expands on this basic idea. Microsofts can have the following kinds of features:
For those who don't recall, Microsoft Corporation was not always a corporate giant; at the time the author wrote this book, Microsoft was one of the many small companies that made software for those newfangled microcomputers. Microsoft the company was started in the mid-1970's; the company name was registered in 1976 and went public in 1986.
Just a couple of years before this novel was written, most software for microcomputers came in a plastic bag with a disk and some photocopied instructions (if you were lucky).
Compare to chiphead, from Nanotime, by Bart Kosko.
So where did Gibson get the name?
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Microsoft-related
news articles:
- Chips In Your Head - Artificial Brain Prosthesis Under Development
- Brain Coprocessor Platform Needed
- Cyborg Rats Have Digital Brain Parts
- Neurological Engineering - Creating Silicon Substrates For Brain Replacement
- Military Implants To Boost Memory
- ARM Wants To Build Brain Chips
| Targeted Neuroplasticity Training For 'Downloading Skills' |
| Will The FDA Approve This Antiaging Drug? |
| EVE Artificial Womb For Lambs (For Now) |
| Bees Royal Jelly Helps Wounds Heal Faster |
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'...what's to keep me from showing face, Man? I'm showing a voice this instant... I can show a face the same way.'
'It was cheaper to pay the refugees to go without up-to-the-minute equipment.'
'...a 2045 convertible with a Hennis-Carleton positronic motor and an Armat chassis.'
'You can hook a Thorsen tube into a control circuit... and the tube will "remember" what was done and can direct the operation...'
Nature is a master of fabricating structured materials consisting of living and non-living components.
'The tiny devices chirped their impulse codes at one another...'
Then some unknown race had chanced upon the dreamers and decided to "help them out."
