#oacet

So, I was at a convention…six years ago? Seven? Anyhow, it was in Baltimore, and I was supposed to meet up with some of my best friends in the entire world who I hadn’t seen in ages, and this mid-20s-something fellow comes up to the table and starts talking to me about how he works for the government and how he’s actually working on the same brain-to-brain technology that is the hallmark of OACET. Which was, of course, the exact moment when my friends text me and some other fellow decides to crowd out the first, and an alarm went off in the convention hall.

All was chaos. By the time things were under control, the first fellow had slipped away. I still don’t know if he was serious or if he was fucking with me. I honestly hope it was both.

Anyhow. Brain-to-brain telepathy will be a thing. But, as is true of many of Musk’s more ambitious projects, he’s overpromising an idea. That’s cool. You have to start somewhere!

I think a brain-to-computer implant will be developed and put into production, probably within our lifetimes. But it won’t be the OACET-type implant (aka: telepathy) that Musk describes. As much as we talk about how brains are their own “computers,” that’s slapping two very dissimilar objects together in a clumsy analogy. The idea that we can create–within the next decade, no less!–a chip that (1) is safe and small enough to go into our brains; which will (2) allow us to talk to each other; while (3) also letting us talk to computers is buuuuuuullshiiiiiiiit. Purely the stuff of science fiction.

Why? Let’s look at some of the themes in the Rachel Peng novels. Particularly the scene in State Machine where she talks about how difficult it would be to bring a modified version of an OACET-type implant to the general public:

Security: How do you prevent not only those outside forces that would tamper with the implant and its host for nefarious purposes (or simple giggles), but also keep the zillions of thoughts you don’t want to receive from strangers, friends, and family out of your head? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my brain directly targeted for advertising or for Facebook posts from That Racist Family Member. We haven’t fully reached the level of technological proficiency needed to selectively target desirable versus undesirable content on the internet, using devices we know and trust, so how would we do this in an unfamiliar computer/brain interface?

Convenience: I’m two years overdue for replacing my phone. I’m not implanting anything in my brain short of a device that would literally keep me alive unless you can promise it’s state-of-the-art and will always remain so.

Accessibility: Rich people who can afford this nonsense will be the first early adopters. The trickle-down process will cap out pretty fucking fast, because elective brain surgery will be cost-prohibitive for most of us. Then you’ve got a class of humans who are TechnoLords versus a class of humans who are average schmucks, and just guess which of those groups is bigger. And angrier. And was plain fed up with this shit even before technomagic got involved.

Also, I think its the ONLY thing I’ve read where the protag is half Chinese. Chinese-American (the search for a Brit counterpart continues, if you have any recs) but still. This is a massive deal. She is a kickass, too. But not in a stereotypical “exotic ninja” Hollywood way, at all. Which is also great. Diversity within the books is good in general, to be honest.

The world-building around the cyborg aspect is really neat - and the issues around how you deal with being part of a very close community (a gestalt, really) are integral to the whole thing, rather than just window dressing. Lots of interesting ethical issues.