Is my novel super technical?

It’s not technical, it’s credible. Think about Jurassic Park. The mosquitos landed on the dinosaurs then landed on Amber and became fossilized. Now if you can find the amber then you get to the mosquito and have dino DNA. All very credible.

So I tried to make my novel credible like that.

But the techie part is not the part that’s interesting. The social impact is the interesting part, what would this do to an individual and to society to have this ability.

Suddenly everyone has all the answers. To everything. All the time. Think about that.

Idea for my high concept

I remember sitting in a business meeting in the late 90’s. I knew the material pretty well so I didn’t fire up my laptop at the start of the meeting.. Then the customer kept drilling down and asking for facts that I didn’t have memorized. I started writing down his questions and telling him I’d get back to him. After about the 10^th question, I fired up my laptop, searched for the data, and answered his questions.

Afterwards, I thought – man, wouldn’t it be nice if I could tap into my laptop, put a little screen inside my glasses that only I could see. Boy, wouldn’t I look like a genius because no one else would be aware.

Then I thought about the social implications. I thought about meeting some girl in a bar. Cyrano de Bergerac style. Switching from scientific to philosophic to comedic mode. Having software sophisticated enough to give you the next line to anything she says or anything you hear.

How many times have you said, ‘Man, I wish I had said such and such’ after a conversation.

And I’ve always believed it’s inevitable so I finally decided to write a book about it.

What people are saying about my novel, inSyte

· A bold brazen thriller with a serious commentary on the future of information. Equal parts Crichton, Clancy and King. (Kirkus Reviews)

· Some of the scenes were so powerful I could barely catch my breath. (Susan Breen, author of The Fiction Class)

· Fight scenes are horrifying and terrific. (Lisa Reardon, author of Billy Dead)

· Riveting futuristic tale of man’s reliance on technology and what could happen if you allow it to control you. (Heather Powers, Earth’s Book Nook)

Virtual Telepathy - part 4

Think of a hydraulic suit, the kind used in the military. So called exoskeleton suits. An article from Sept 2010 demonstrated the 2^nd generation Exoskeleton (XOS 2) that allows a soldier to easily and repeatedly lift 200 pounds and punch through 3 inches of solid wood. Eventually you get to suit Sigourney Weaver used to battle the queen in 1986’s Aliens.

The you slim it down so that being paralyzed is not something you would necessarily notice.

So man is melded with machine.

And inSyte does the same for the mind. Blindness? A thing of the past. People can see now through a camera smaller than a button in resolution that exceeds natural sight because it includes infrared, a larger spectrum of light becomes visible.

No more need for flashlights for anyone.

These are physical meldings.

Mental – now you have access to everything all the time. You google as easily as you peruse your own memories.

Try to remember the lyrics to a song you used to know. You can’t quite remember so you google it.

Well, now you wouldn’t have to do that manually. Anything you think of, it’s there, in your mind. You’d soon lose the sensation that you were looking on servers. IT would all just become part of your memory.

There would be no more betting on recorded information. I’ll bet you twenty bucks the Beatles first showed up in the US in Feb 1964. Thing of the past.

You wouldn’t leave home with out it. You think you feel naked leaving your home without your cell phone? You would feel downright blind and dumb without inSyte. Flying without your instruments. Weak. Frail. Insubstantial. Incapable. Alone. Afraid.

Within 10 years clock speeds for CPU’s will catch up and surpass the speed of thought. What about within 50 years? 100 years?

Machines taking over?

Virtual Telepathy - part 3

OK, back to positive uses: I can tell my wife to pick up some milk. While I’m at home and she’s at the store.

But we’re back to the interruption thing. You’d never get ANYTHING accomplished.

So you would have to devise a way to shut others out. Unless its an emergency.

What about hackers? Someone could hack into your mind with a nightmare image. Cause a hallucination. Take you into a virtual reality. Maybe during a business meeting. Of course, that happens today, every day. But it’s your computer or smart phone that’s getting hacked. Not your mind.

What about TV Game shows? Jeopardy. You have to have a way to turn it all off.

OK – back to the communication techniques. Instant Messaging, Skype, phone calls (of course) – but calls that take place over the data network.

Facetime calls take place in your mind now.

Facebook.

Avatars.

Skype with avatars – so now someone virtually flirts with you and they look like Marilyn Monroe and you look like Clint Eastwood. Who knows what you both really look like.

Who cares?

Could this extend to business meetings? So you want to come across as tall, dark, menacing? Or charming, the perfect gentlemen.

Why stop there? Program it all ahead of time.

I’m not saying the computers would handle all aspects of the negotiation any time soon, that success and profit and loss financially and in a larger business sense are achieved by the company who hires the best programmers.

In the near term its probably something more along the lines of a melding of man and machine. So the machine component improves the package. The mental package.

Virtual Telepathy - part 2

But take the next leap – maybe 20 years in the future. Back to the screen in your mind.

Now you can talk to anyone else on the grid with your thoughts.

The simple notion is that someone IM’s you, you have an IM session in your head.

See, we want to take existing patterns, existing technology and project what we know into the next wave. That’s why the early television shows were extensions of what had been on the radio. The Lone Ranger, What’s my line. Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life.

It took about a decade for TV to develop based on its own unique attributes, to become a more visual medium.

Ok – so you can IM someone. Big deal. How about skype? Visually communicating with your friend in another state. Silently.

Sounds like impossible science fiction from the fifties, right?

“Video brings the Internet to life,” said Chambers. “You are moving from a messaging platform to a video platform.”

Expand your thought. What would that bring that we don’t have now?

If you’re in an accident then you can call for help. Back to telepathy.

If you’re in a critical negotiation, you could communicate with your business partner. How many times have you said to someone – Man, I wanted to tell you but we couldn’t because the other guy was standing right there!

What else? Reverse it – how do you protect your thoughts. You don’t want the other side to sense your floor price. You don’t want your wife to know that you really don’t like the way she looks in the sunlight today. Or how nice the waitress looks.

So you have to protect your thoughts. Let’s say that’s a given, the technology will do that. Similar to the way you have DMZs on networks today.

So only your thoughts that go into the DMZ can be picked up on.

Again – is your spouse going to be OK with that? That now you’re hiding your thoughts intentionally? Could anyone be ‘totally honest’?

Could the authorities get a warrant to explore past the DMZ based on the Patriot Act?

The conspiracy crowd would have a heyday. Minority Report stuff. If you think about a crime most rational people would say you’re not guilty.

What happens when you’re planning a crime? Does probably cause enter the equation if the authorities found physical proof of premeditation only as a result of reading your thoughts?

Well, if they could prevent another 911 then of course you would want them to. Beats waterboarding.

Virtual Telepathy

Your world, Connected. We see these taglines for SPs and for technology. Because with a smartphone or a PC there are a number of ways to communicate with others. In real time.

Instant Messaging, Skype, phone calls (of course) – but calls that take place over the data network. Facetime.

So in my book, only one person has the screen in his mind.

What happens when everyone has it?

Well, then you’re communicating in real time with other people using the airwaves, using RF.

Invisibly.

My novel explores one person having access to a screen and the voice recognition SW has developed to the point where google searches occur based on local audio. So he can search the grid the way others search their mind.

But what if he could search by just ‘thinking’. He does some of that in my book, and I don’t make a real distinction between voice recognition vs thinking – but in reality they are two entirely different things.

The idea VR tech could advance by 2020 to real time – not a big leap.

The idea that your thought waves could act as input to a virtual keyboard, if you will – well, that’s a bigger leap.

Yet the technology is out there, it’s being explored. Neurofeedback – or Thought Technology – is about EEG based biofeedback where technology responds to your thoughts, to your brain energy and patterns. Pretty rudimentary today. Designed for people who are paralyzed where they can navigate a computer mouse, to some degree.

Very much like telepathy.