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When reading Gibson's description of ICE, then Black ICE, I always figured that the former was a hunter program...for while his versions of the Net had many nifty requires-brain-plugs features, the process of hacking still involved data-processing techniques of breaking security and concealing one's real and net-local presence, and the opposition defending by blocking and tracking the hacker. Black ICE, then, not merely allowed security to get a lock on the hacker both in and out of the Net, but created electrical feedback to over-stimulate the brain via the wiring of the deck-to-skull-plug interface and the former's power source...not relying on anything as sophisticated as a targetting a specific brain region, but rather sledge-hammering all of the systems connected to the deck with electricity (which royally fucks up neuronal action potentials). This sort of fit with several characters being wounded or damaged in various ways, but not killed outright, by black ICE: the stochastiticity inherent to ganglion interconnections meant that some fellows got lucky and missed having a spectacularly fatal nerve connection damaged.
Beyond Gibson, the question of why someone would die in cyber space ultimately lies in the two-way-street aspect of the mind-machine interface: the brain "believes" its own sensorial data, so any device, regardless of its delivery mechanics, is designed to provide/simulate new/false data to the brain. Witin this is the inherent risk of communicating signals that relay the brain a sense of false threat...or false safety. So the question is what parts of the brain are "connected up" and how badly can they go wrong.
A rig set simulating visual data probably couldn't kill you, barring the out-right electrocution factor, because the data is flowing in along a very specific ganglion route back to your parietal lobe, etc., where the impulses are processed, interpreted, then sent forward to the frontal cortex to impact planning, memory, etc. Nothing along the ganglion pathway directly effects a life-sustaining system.
Similarly, a simulation of the sensory data of, let's say, a gunshot, wouldn't be fatal as a result of the "false" kinesthetic and pain data: those things about a gunshot don't kill you, the hole in your vital organs and the blood loss do. So unless the "virtual reality" simulation involves some component actually in your blood stream or organs spitting toxins or leaching out oxygen to simulate internal damage, your brain will stay alive (and pants-shitting terrified). So even if your brain feels the pain, etc. of a gut shot, your liver, intestines, and all just keep rolling along: they, inside the body, don't have a shut-down built in...they hammer along with minimal assists from the hypothalamus and the medulla, regardless of what the upper cortex is convinced of. There are schizophrenics with all sorts of dysmorphic concepts about how their body works (or doesn't), but their bodies run just fine. There remains, then, the question of cardiac shock causing death.
The nastiest death I can think of is basically virtual strychnine: if the proposed hacker has implants within the motor cortex (necessary for the planning of volitional movement, and even *thoughts* regarding movements, as would be necessary to move, say, an avatar), imagine disrupting or suppressing the motor impulses that control the diaphragm and rib-muscles, effectively suffocating the subject. Then again, if maiming is more your style, the options really open up. All of those wonderful brain pathways hooked up means the possibility of generating all sorts of horrid neurological problems: dyskinesias, aphagias, choreas, tics, standing tremors, or just good-old fashioned seizures. On the more insidious level, access to the mechanics of the sensorium means the induction of simulated hallucinations, visual-processing maladies such as achromatopsia, or any of the paraseises, and phantom pain. |
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