From: dream!Marcus_Brodeur@bikini.cis.ufl.edu (Marcus Brodeur)
Subject: Re: INDUSTRY: FLASH! "VPL is dead, long live VPL . . ."
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: DreamStates BBS & CyberNet HQ in G'ville, FL   1-904-331-4317
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 16:05:48 GMT



 DG> Actuall, I agree with Marc, I've felt for a long time now that the
 DG> dataglove and helmet things was pretty prehistoric.  Like he said we
 DG> need to focus on enabling technologies that are going to lead to the
 DG> form in which true VR will ultimately exist: direct neural I/O.
 DG> Anything less is just a toy...

Oh, dear...here we go again.  "Direct neural I/O."  Sigh.  Look, to be
honest, I have nothing against the concept of direct neural interfaces. 
But it is just that:  a *concept*.  Someday rather far in the future, I
suspect we will eventually have the technology.  But today we don't.  And
with the current knowledge we have of the brain and how it operates, we
cannot *hope* to have the technology.  Not in our lifetimes.  Not in our
children's or great-grandchildren's lifetimes.

What we *do* have are these prehistoric apparati.  Yes, they're bulky,
ugly, irritating, and ungainly.  They are nevertheless *there*.  We at
least have them.  And work is being done to make them more practical,
streamlined, aesthetically pleasing and non-interfering in a virtual
experience.  It is not very charitable of you to in essence call them
"toys" and dismiss their usefulness at that.  To be honest, it's insulting
to the people working on them, who are perfectly cognizant of the
limitations of their equipment.  But you don't offer anything *real* in
return.

Direct neural I/O?  I'd love it.  But it's not going to happen in this
coming decade, this coming century, and possibly not even in the first half
of this coming millenium.  Even *if* suddenly neuroscience researchers
suddenly *did* possess the breakthrough knowledge of how memory,
perception, and experience could be introduced and extracted directly from
the grey matter, we still wouldn't have the technology to do it.  Taking
this a step further, even *if* industry then, sensing it's opportunity,
developed a miraculous technology for hooking up to the human brain, the
technology would still prove relatively unusable to the average person.

I'm not talking unavailable; I am saying *unusable*.  First, there's the
problem of the heat sink.  Even as miniturization marches on, these chips
(and in fact, all electronics) heat up when they are used.  The kind of
heat produced by "cyber-implants" in the brain would pose a definite danger
to its function; the heat sink would have to carry that heat away somehow,
and installing a cooling fan in your cerebrum just doesn't work.  Secondly,
and more importantly, is the question of the processing time gap.

This is important.  Human neural activity works in speeds in the
millisecond range.  Computer technology has already advanced well past that
and is shooting for routine nanosecond processing.  What this means to
"direct neural I/O" is that even *if* neuroscience knew where to plug in,
even *if* industry knew how to plug in, even *if* the problems of plugging
in could be solved on a physical scale, you would still end up with a
system unusable by *your* standards.  That's a cubed-if expression...the
technical terminology for which is "pretty damned iffy".

Perhaps you don't see my point.  Here, allow me to be plain:  if your
computers are operating in nanoseconds and megaflops and your brain is
puttering around in milliseconds, your brain becomes the weak link in the
system.  Funny, isn't it?  Massive bottlenecks of information pile up from
the computer, waiting for the brain to be able to process them.  And this
common vision of "wireskippers" (and trust me, I love cyberpunk) is
nonsense.  You truly believe hackers with direct neural interfaces can
compete with security programs that operate upwards of a million times
faster than the human brain?  I suppose it would be possible to set up
"macro functions" in order to trigger pre-written programs on the hacker's
computer to combat the speed of the other computer, but again, the response
time would be limited to the hacker's brain. It's a very troublesome
proposition.

All in all, don't get me wrong, but I feel it is *not* in the best
interests of virtual-worlds technology at this time to seriously advocate
the abandoning of current interfacing equipment as "toys".  It's incredibly
short-sighted in the long run.  And, regardless of the marvelous advance of
technology, it will be a very long time indeed before "direct neural I/O"
of the kind you envision being anything more than a glorious vision to work
towards.

!!!!! T  E   M    P     U      S      F     U    G   I  T !!!!! 

-- Via DLG Pro v0.995

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