Science Fiction
Dictionary Latest By
"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
|
This is one of the more insidious pieces of technovelgy that you are likely to run into. The design is simplicity itself; The part you can see is just a "fist-sized droud that protruded like a black plastic canker from the crown of [the user's] head."
A droud provides the current; the business end of the droud is inserted into an ecstasy plug embedded in the skull.
Here's a quote from a later book, Ringworld Engineers:
Times change. Generations later, these same cultures usually see current addiction as a mixed blessing. Older sins -- alcoholism and drug addiction and compulsive gambling -- cannot compete. People who can be hooked by drugs are happier with the wire. They take longer to die, and they tend not to have children.
It costs almost nothing. An ecstasy peddler can raise the price of the operation, but for what? The user isn't a wirehead until the wire has been embedded in the pleasure center of his brain. Then the peddler has no hold over him, for the user gets his kicks from house current...
Louis seemed to sag in upon himself. He reached across his smooth scalp to the base of the long black braid, and pulled the droud from its socket beneath the hair. He held it in his hand, considering; then, as always, he dropped it into a drawer and locked it.
Fortunately, no one really knows the precise place to insert the wire; also, the operation itself would be expensive, and keeping the site of the incision clean would be difficult.
The author remarks that
More recently, the Vagal Nerve Stimulator (manufactured by Cyberonics Inc), sends a mild electrical pulse to the vagus nerve (10th cranial nerve), which stimulates regions of the brain believed to control emotions. The device, originally designed to help patients with epilepsy (and approved by the FDA for this purpose), is now being proposed for use with patients with otherwise untreatable depression.
Compare to the pleasure cap from Cordwainer Smith's 1961 novel A Planet Named Shayol. Comment/Join this discussion ( 3 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
resources: Droud-related
news articles:
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
RoboShiko! Sumo Exercises Still Good For Robots
'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'
Giant Robotic Hands At Gundam Next Future Science
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'
JWST Finds Bucking Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'
BeamBike Solar Power Canopy For Electric Bikes
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
MouthPad Supports Head And Tongue Tracking
'The operation that had transformed half his body... had located the control switchboard in his teeth.'
|
Home | Glossary
| Science Fiction Timeline | Category | New | Contact
Us | FAQ | Advertise | Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™ Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved. |
||