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"The primary attraction [of writing sf] is the sheer pleasure of creating something from whole cloth."
- Dan Simmons
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| Dental Switchboard | ||
| A control device tied in with teeth and nerve endings. |
This device provides a hands-free way to control other devices; in this case, a set of body modifications. In the novel, Gully Foyle seeks revenge on those who abandoned him in space; he has his entire body rewired for greater strength and speed.
| He pressed hard with his tongue against his right upper first molar. The operation that had transformed half his body into an electronic machine, had located the control switchboard in his teeth. Foyle pressed a tooth with his tongue and the peripheral cells of his retina were excited into emitting a soft light. He looked down two pale beams at the corpse of a man... |
| Technovelgy from The Stars My Destination,
by Alfred Bester. Published by Berkley in 1956 Additional resources -
|
I can't find this as an assistive device for people who are unable to use ordinary controllers (like people with high spinal injuries); I wonder if it is worth exploring. An interesting use of computers as an assistive device is found in this article Spinal Cord Injury and how to live with it. It describes a mouse-substitute that can be operated with lips and tongue alone. Left and right mouse clicks are done by sipping from or puffing into the "hollow joystick."
It would be handy for athletes; here's a bit more:
Foyle touched his tongue to the switchboard wired into the nerve endings of his teeth. He accelerated...
He backed a step and pressed his tongue against his upper incisors. Neural circuits buzzed and every sense and response in his body was accelerated by a factor of five.
William Gibson uses this with his razorgirl Molly in Neuromancer (1984):
She pressed her tongue hard against her lower front teeth. One moved slightly, activating her microchannel amps; the random bounce of photons through the darkness was converted to a pulse of electrons, the concrete around her coming up ghost-pale and grainy. `Okay, honey. Now we go out to play.'
Compare to the Ullran enunciator from Uller Uprising (1952) by H. Beam Piper and the tongue mouse from Quantico (2007) by Greg Bear.
Every nerve plexus had been rewired, microscopic transistors and transformers had been buried in muscle and bone...
TIME MOLLY TIME NOW.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Stars My Destination
More Ideas
and Technology by Alfred Bester
Tech news articles related to The Stars My Destination
Tech news articles related to works by Alfred Bester
Dental Switchboard-related
news articles:
- Tongue Controller Uses Tongue Magnets
- Tongue Drive System Validated In Clinical Trial
- iLickit App Reveals iPhone Tongue Interface
- Intraoral Tongue Drive System
- Tongue Mouse Created By Valve Engineer
- Cyborg Eye Flashlight Lights Up The Room
- MouthPad Supports Head And Tongue Tracking
| MIT Headset Lets You Communicate Without Speaking |
| Tongue Mouse Created By Valve Engineer |
| Skinput Uses Your Skin As An Input Device |
| AcceleGlove Open-Source Data Glove |
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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors...'
'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
