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"The world is really so surreal these days that it's necessary for us to blunt it somehow in order to stay sane. The artist functions to short-circuit the buffering mechanism, so that people can occasionally perceive the weirdness of things as they are."
- William Gibson
 |
| Penfield Wave Transmitter | ||
| A device that directs some sort of energy wave into a person's brain, allowing them to experience a chosen (dialed) mood. |
This device is the functional part of a mood organ. You could probably find the transmitter you needed at a good hobbyshop; the problem is figuring out how to tune in on the emotional brain.
| Setting down his weapons kit he fumbled it open, got out a nondirectional Penfield wave transmitter; he punched the key for catelepsy, himself protected against the mood emanation by means of a counterwave broadcast through the transmitter's metal hull directed to him alone. |
| From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Doubleday in 1968 Additional resources -
|
This makes for a new kind of non-lethal weapon. You could, of course, project other moods. For example, you could project Obedience to Lawful Authority, Sheeplike Subservience, or even Fawning Admiration of Government Functionaries. According to the novel, the Penfield wave transmitter is capable of generating very specific emotional responses.
The Penfield Wave Transmitter was almost certainly named after Wilder Penfield. He is credited with first establishing (in 1957) that a map of the human body exists in the brain; in other words, specific areas of the cortex process information from different body areas.
Another technovelgy item, the tasp from Larry Niven's Ringworld, a handheld device that causes the affected person to enter a state of ecstatic pure pleasure, may also be of interest. Specialized, but then, it may produce the one state that everyone is guaranteed to like.
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