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"To get anywhere, or even live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer."
- Robert Heinlein
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| Display-Induced Epileptic Seizure | ||
| A computer program that flashes a computer display to induce an epileptic seizure in the user. |
Victor Apfel, epileptic, and Lisa Foo, computer hacker, get a little bit too close to Things We Are Not Meant To Know, with a near-tragic result.
| We were almost through when her monitor screen began to malfunction. It actually gave off a few hisses and pops, so Lisa stood back from it for a moment, then the screen started to flicker. I stared at it for a while. It seemed to me that there was an image trying to form on the screen. Something three-dimensional. Just as I was starting to get a picture of it I happened to glance at Lisa, and she was looking at me. Her face was flickering. She came to me and put her hands over my eyes.
"Victor, you shouldn't look at that." "It's okay," I told her. And when I said it, it was, but as soon as I had the words out, I knew that it wasn't. And that is the last thing I remembered for a long time. |
| Technovelgy from Press Enter,
by John Varley. Published by Davis Publications in 1984 Additional resources -
|
Something like this actually happened in Japan in 1997:
TOKYO (CNN) -- The bright flashing lights of a popular TV cartoon became a serious matter Tuesday evening, when they triggered seizures in hundreds of Japanese children.
In a national survey, the Tokyo fire department found that at least 618 children had suffered convulsions, vomiting, irritated eyes, and other symptoms after watching "Pokemon."
Japanese television network NHK reported that 111 people were still hospitalized Wednesday morning.
Compare to the the LOOKER (Light Ocular-Oriented Kinetic Emotive Responses) gun from the 1981 film LOOKER written and directed by Michael Crichton. The device is a light pulse device that gives the illusion of invisibility by instantly mesmerizing its victims into losing all sense of time.
Japanese cartoon triggers seizures in hundreds of children
(LOOKER gun)
Compare to the nerve control lines from The Rull by AE van Vogt, Van Goom's Gambit from Van Goom's Gambit (1966) by Victor Contoski, BLIT from Blit (1988) by David Langford and the ugly T-shirt from Zero History (2010) by William Gibson.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Press Enter
More Ideas
and Technology by John Varley
Tech news articles related to Press Enter
Tech news articles related to works by John Varley
Display-Induced Epileptic Seizure-related
news articles:
- Hackers Induce Epileptic Seizure Like 'Press Enter'
- Army Seizure Ray Inspired By Pikachu (Updated)
- Rise Of Skywalker Could Trigger Epileptic Seizures
| China's Handheld Electromagnetic Gun |
| Is The Seattle Ultrasonics C-200 A Heinlein Vibroblade? |
| Man Builds 200 Foot Basement Firing Range |
| Russians Create Robot Tank Platoons |
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'...each of them is a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk who actually lived.'
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.'
'... every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions.'
'Completely silent, accurate up to about twenty meters. No recoil...'
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
