From: Max More (maxmore@globalpac.com)
Date: Mon Oct 19 1998 - 09:21:49 MDT
At 01:19 AM 10/19/98 -0400, Ian Goddard wrote:
>
> IAN: Curious. I was just wondering what remotely
> induced thought/actions would appear like to the
> actor, and it occurred to me that they may always
> seem to be self-originated, since the brain would
> assume anything coming from inside it (including
> an impulse from a implant inside it) is itself; it
> would evoke no anti-bodies, so to say, in responce
> to the alien invasion. An implant would slip into
> the thing known as "myself," and thus the mind
> could not perceive it as being other than self.
One of my favorite SF writers, Greg Egan, has dealt with this brilliantly,
especially in Quarantine, and some of the stories in Axiomatic (inc. the
title story). For instance, in the novel, the neurotechnologically
augmented private eye is given a "loyalty mod" by a mysterious group. He
*knows* that he has an implant that makes him want to serve the group, yet
he really *does* want to serve it. Egan does a good job examining how his
character deals with this dissonance.
Marc Steigler's wonderfully extropian story, "The Gentle Seduction"
(reprinted in Nanodreams) does something like you mention. His character
receives an implant bestowing mathematical abilities. The new calculative
abilities seem to the person to come not from an external device, but from
her own mind. That's the way a good interface should be! Perhaps that is
one mark of an enhancement/augmentation vs. the addition of a separate device.
Max
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