Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"I think crypto will slowly percolate its way up and people will adopt it gradually as user friendly, cheap products, become available."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Biosoft | ||
| A biography that includes actual life experience from the subject; a biographical download. |
This piece of technovelgy is the ultimate in mixed media. Not only do you have the usual items, text reports and photographs along with video recordings of the subject, but actual life experience of the person. In order to experience a biosoft, you need to "jack" it directly into your brain (the expression derives from "phone jack", the connector that you used to plug your phone line into before you got your cell phone.)
| Turner put the gun down on the nearest table and took the
thing from Conroy. It was like a swollen gray microsoft. One
end routine neurojack, the other a strange, rounded formation unlike anything he'd seen. "What is it?" "It's biosoft. Jaylene jacked it and said she thought it was output from an Al. It's sort of a dossier on Mitchell, with a message to Hosaka tacked on the end. You better jack it yourself; you wanna get the picture fast . . It came on, again, gradually, a flickering, nonlinear flood of fact and sensory data, a kind of narrative conveyed in surreal jump cuts and juxtapositions. It was vaguely like riding a roller coaster that phased in and out of existence at random, impossibly rapid intervals, changing altitude, attack, and direction with each pulse of nothingness, except that the shifts had nothing to do with any physical orientation, but rather with lightning alternations in paradigm and symbol system. The data had never been intended for human input. |
| From Count Zero,
by William Gibson. Published by Arbor House in 1986 Additional resources -
|
A biosoft is apparently not arranged in an ordered sequence; but neither is your life. One of the characteristics of people who request detailed biographies of others (particularly in a business context) is that they are looking for control and want to experience everything being in their control. This bewildering fountain of experience might be too chaotic for such individuals, but if you really want the flavor of the person, you may need to relinquish control.
Comment/Join this discussion (BACK ON!) ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Count Zero
More Ideas
and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to Count Zero
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
| Rats Communicate Brain-to-Brain |
| Microsoft Demos Spoken English To Chinese 'Universal Translator' |
| Kyocera Speakerless Smartphone (ala Gernsback) |
| Wavii Follows Your Selected News |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
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.
|
'Then he saw the geek ... leaning against one of the slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
How long ago did Robert Heinlein write about skiing on dry alien worlds?
'There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.'
'A cable, here, from the controller to the interface plug... wires from that to the brain.'
'Everything was ready, awaiting the Overlords' pleasure...'
'Five hundred billion gallons worth of Antarctic iceberg had been towed into Santa Monica Bay.'
