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"I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'Science Fiction' and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| XV | ||
| Allows anyone to directly experience another person's conscious awareness. |
This is another variant on the idea of stimsim, a way of being able to actually have the same experience of another person.
| When XV was introduced in 2006, it was denounced roundly for being even more attention-absorbing than television. It was also praised highly because it allowed anyone to have the experience instantly of knowing how to do a thing, and of doing it…You could take a psychopath with no empathy and give him the experience of being a victim. This was the experiment that revealed the flaw. |
| Technovelgy from Mother of Storms,
by John Barnes. Published by Tor in 1994 Additional resources -
|
If it existed, this device would solve one of the twentieth century's most vexing philosophical problems - the private language argument proposed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his book Philosophical Investigations. The argument is stated with characteristic succinctness in the following quote:
If you had XV, you could know.
The words of this language are to refer to what can be known only to the speaker; to his immediate, private, sensations. So another cannot understand the language.
Even when I use words that we all hold in common, how can you be sure that when I use a word like "upset" that I mean the same thing, the same internal experience, as you mean when you use the word?
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'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.'
'...copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting.'
'It was almost unheard of for slunch to spread that fast...'
'He then started hand movements of definite pattern...'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
