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"...science fiction is sort of like a sociological genome. It's a huge range of possible futures, most of them useless; some vital. You never really know in advance."
- Peter Watts
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| 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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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
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'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
