"Stephen Kenson - Technobabel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kenson Stephen)

looking for. Instead of programming every single detail of the desired image
or sensory impression, the programmer uses certain key elements of the
experience to evoke an overall sensation from the receiver of the impressions.
Simsense producers and editors use a similar technique in producing biochips.
The user's own imagination fills in the "gaps" in the sensory information to
produce a contiguous whole, and the entirety of the impression is perceived
with minimal system space occupied by the necessary imagery.
This technique of "simplifying" sensory impression has been known to
practitioners of memorization and visualization techniques for centuries, but
with the advent of virtual reality programming and ASIST technology, we have
opened entirely new doorways of perception, the likes of which Aldous Huxley
could

never even have dreamed. We are learning more than just how to program our
machines.
We are learning how to program ourselves.
-Iconography and the Deep Mind,
by Dr. Yoshi Tanaka, E-Books Press,
New York, 2054
The dreams I have are strange. I recall a glittering neon world of line and
form extending in all directions to the endless horizon, and another place
which is all that and so much more. I hear songs and words and riddles in that
place, but they are not in any language spoken by human mouths. It is a secret
language. The language of the other place. I remember. I remember going down a
long trail to a place with a deep well full of silvery water. A voice tells me
to drink from the well, and I cup the water in my hands, cool and shimmering
like quicksilver. As I drink it down I realize it's not water I'm drinking,
it's knowledge. Liquid software, every molecule encoded with information,
spreading out through my cells in a cool wave, speaking to my DNA in a strange
and alien language. I'm changing, changing, changing into what?
I wake from the dream with a start and realize I'm not where I was before. The
dark and damp alley is gone and daylight streams into the room. Where am I? A
bed. A clean bed in a room somewhere. How did I get here? I remember the alley
and the chop-shop and the ghoul and I wonder if this place is as dangerous. It
feels different to me for some reason. I feel safe here. This place is
familiar somehow. I think I know it, but the information slips away from me
when I try and grasp it, as elusive as the images from my dream. I still can't
remember anything from before waking up in the alley where the body-snatchers
found me and I wonder if I've simply forgotten coming here from the alley. Or
has all of it been a dream? No. I'm sure what I recall of the encounter with
the body-snatchers and their ghoul boss was real. I glance at the back of my
wrist and I can still see the faint white line where the cutting blade
emerged. That was certainly real.

I look around the room and take stock of my surroundings. The place is old and
shows signs of its age. The walls are of stone, heavy and gray, and the floor
is covered with an oriental carpet of faded jewel tones. The light in the room
comes from tall, slitted windows. Some of them are covered with sheets of
translucent construction plastic in different colors while a few still have
panes of stained glass in them. The glass depicts saints and religious icons