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"People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research. I just enjoy reading the stuff, and some of it sticks in my mind and fits into the stories."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Jack In | ||
| To open one's nervous system to a computer's virtual world. |
As far as I know, this is the first reference to the idea that a humanoid being (note that it is an android doing it) can directly perceive information presented by a computer.
The individual who is using the computer feed is an android, a redesigned and (in some ways) perfected form of human being.
| As he pushed the computer's snub-tipped terminal node into the input jack on his left forearm, the android saw Leon Spaulding's lip tighten in a scowl of - what? Contempt, envy, patronizing scorn? ...At the click of contact, the computer impulses came flooding across the interface into his brain and he forgot about Spaulding.
It was like having a thousand eyes... He was in total communion with the computer, making use of all its sensors, scanners and terminals. Why go through the tedious routine of talking to a computer, when it was possible to design an android capable of becoming part of one? The data torrent brought a surge of ecstasy. ...He raised and lowered scooprods, requisitioned next week's blocks, ordered filaments for the tachyon-beam men... No human could handle this, he knew, even if there was some way for humans to jack themselves directly into a computer... Watchman unjacked himself. |
| Technovelgy from Tower of Glass,
by Robert Silverberg. Published by Gollancz in 1970 Additional resources -
|
William Gibson made frequent use of this term and idea in his 1985 blockbuster Neuromancer:
It was exactly the sensation of someone reading over his shoulder.
Compare to eccentric projection from The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1974) by James Tiptree, Jr. See the article on the first use of android in The Cometeers (1936) by Jack Williamson.
He slotted some ice, connected the construct and jacked in.
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'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'...support the interior human structure against Jupiter’s pull.'
'Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray...'
'The German chemists have discovered how to supply the needed elements in compact, undiluted form...'
'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
