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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: who does it... // State of the art today?
Message-ID: <3048@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Thu, 24-Sep-87 07:13:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.3048
Posted: Thu Sep 24 07:13:01 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Sep-87 09:34:08 EDT
References: <4319@spool.wisc.edu>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 21

Then there's also Walter Jon Williams' _HardWired_ (ISBN 0-812-55796-4).
I liked it, as a good old charismatic outlaws versus the government story.
You can tell it's punk from the leathers worn by the characters on the
front cover, not to mention the cut of their hair.  You can tell it's
cyber because they have chips stuck to their temples.

But Seriously, Folks, I don't want to get too hung up in definitions
and review of the literature; I'd rather talk about how we get there
from here (or avoid getting there, if that's better).

Much of the cyberpunk literature seems to assume direct brain/chip
connections, without even the benefit of an RS232 port (;_).  Is there
anyone here who can speak knowledgeably about the current state of
human-nerve-to-electronics interfaces?  My impression is that nobody
knows how to get more than a few bits per second through them, in
either direction, and that nobody has trained themself to send or
receive language through such an interface.  Or, in other words, CRT's
and keyboards are the state of the art in man/machine interface, and
no clear direction improves on that.
-- 
{dasys1,ncoast,well,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu			  gnu@toad.com