I was thinking the other day..

What about a Bioware brain implant (Cultured Bioware) that would mimic "multiple personalities."

A small node of brain tissue that contained a completely alternate personality.

Possible benefits:

1) 24 hour a day activity.. if one personality sleeps the other can still be active.
2) Different skill sets for the different personality...
3) Two heads are better then one.. allows multi-tasking on difficult jobs between personalities.

Of course.. dangerous penalties...

1) Possible psychosis.
2) Possible mental battle of wills.
3) everyone thinks you are crazy.....

Just an interesting idea...

ugh, i can allready see the hacker that uses this to do 24/7 coding...

there was a SR novel, cant remember the name, character got a beta test model of the sleep regulator and it exposed the fact that she, because she had been bio engineered had a sleeping multiple personality....whenever the regulator was turned on it brought out the second personality, it ended up being a "switch" for the personalities to change

Oh.. and a few other ideas...

A lymbic system manipulator: The Limbic nodes of a brain do several functions, but one of them is "fear". A Lymbic manipulator would allow a runner to "turn off" his or her ability to be afraid.

Other possibilities:

- Removal of all feeings of hunger or thirst (you will still dehydrate/starve, but you will never feel hungry or thirsty). (Turn on/off).

- Instant control over anger. Turn it off/on like a switch.

- Instant control over 'sexual' desires. turn off, and eliminate male suceptability to female charms. Turn on, and back to normal, switch to 'overdrive' and anyone is your ideal mate.

- Possible removal of ALL emotion for a short time.

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Neural Chemical Reassociation: Imagine the place in your brain that holds the item "Chocolate equals pleasure." and a nantoech machine re-writes that place to instead mean "Celery equals pleasure." Then have the nanotech machine hardwire that in place so it can not change back.

Imagine being able to re-write your entire neural associations with a pre-programmed list of chriteria.. Imagine mega-corporations doing it....

Something Deus already did?

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Frog Legs: Take the specific leg characteristics of an Amphibian and alter a human's legs to mimic them. Adds +1 meter to all vertical jumps and +3 meters to all horizontal jumps per rating of bioware.

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Watching Ghost in the Shell the other day, gave me cool ideas for a cyberware system...

Eye Implant :: Visual Scan Link (VSL)

Use: As items and places appear in view. The system highlights each object and does a matrix search for the item using either its RFID or image scanning of the shape, known icons or identifyable symbols or designs. Data about an item is immediately displayed as a tag on those items with Augmented Reality arrows. This system will only work with an active matrix linkup either by an external or internal comlink.

Dodger is walking downtown and decides to turn on his VSL. He turns a corner and a man and woman are walking towards him. The VSL activates and the man's briefcase highlights and its model "Samsonite XL302, Circa: 2059" appears. A commlink is poking out of his jacket pocket, the VSL has it highlighted, and it has listed "?? Unknown Commlink" until he turns for a moment and more of it is revealed, then it highlights a spiral graphic on the unit and says "Hermes Icon, Circa: 2070" The woman has on sunglasses and the VSL names then "Vashoon AR Shades, Circa: 2069" as Dodger continues down the street he comes to a doorway, the doorway is highlighted and named "Ares Clearview Armored Entry Way Model 2491c" the handle is "Ares SecureHandle Model#19354 - MAGLOCK Model #14912 (ALERT:: Recalled item number #14912)- Click arrow for details) Dodger clicks the arrow and reads that the lock is suceptible in opening if hit very hard, this lock should have been replaced"

A runner with VSL is constantly updated with information about the objects and devices in his area. That much information can be distracting, and it does require an active matrix linkup to work (but this is possible, even with a comlink in hidden mode). The system would require that software be running on the comlink to facilitate the download and upload of data and a browse program also loaded in memory to do the actual search.

Two agents together could do this realy well. One scanning the rfid tags, the other scanning visible images...IE someones face or whatnot.

I don't see the 'small node with a duplicate personality idea' working. As I understand it personality isn't located in one small node in the brain you can duplicate. It's more a holistic property of the brain. Also sleep isn't a 'brain shuts down for the night' event. The entire brain is involved in what from what I understand is a complex sequence on critical maintenance functions and other activities (such as processing the days memories), some of these need as much brain activity as being fully awake. So even if you could then switch on a second personality (that would require a lot more than just adding a small extra piece of brain matter) during' sleep' the brain activity of that second personality would make a mess of the brains sleep activities (some of which include a form of body paralysis, otherwise during REM sleep you'd be running, jumping, wildly rolling about and lots of other things). Finally the entire body needs sleep, most of the bodies healing and growth for instance take place during sleep as do other maintenance functions the body needs. So a second personalty being awake when the first is asleep would in effect deprive the first of any sleep benefits. Within a day all those wonderful sleep deprivation effects would be kicking, for both personalities.

Much more plausible would be 'sleep regulator' type bioware / genetic therapy that alters things so you need less sleep, how far you can push that would need a neurologist to answer but for game purposes I'd suggest reduce normal regular sleep cycle to 4 hours (on average people need about 8 hours regular sleep)

Why make up new bioware for this, when it already exists as personafix chips?



Regardless - it's not the personality that needs the sleep, it's the body.

One word: Provigil. It'll be another 5 years before I'd consider it "safe" in the short-term and 10 more before anyone can be confident that a significant statistical sampling had no long-term affects.

But in 2070? I could see it.

Sounds like Long Haul Light.

I had that same effect the first time i ingested 5ml of those 10ml vials of echanatia extract you can buy in Chinatown and various hebal stores. I had gotten up 8am in the morning. I went over to a budies house early afternoon. He said here, try this. Mixed with a glass of water on a nearly empty stomach (had had lunch). I then stayed up till noon the next day, went to bed for 8 hours, and then got up like it had been a normal day. Didn't felt wired at all during or after. When sitting i did notice a slight tingling on the bottom of me feet, but that could have been psychosomatic.

After the first few times though the effect mostly faded. Definately not the same power as caffine (which i avoid because my body and mind deals with very poorly with it), or 5mg dexadrine (AF go-pills).

P.S. I also stay up for long periods of time in my work, and driving too. I find that once into the grove you body will adjust, and i can function well on 4ish hours/day in cat naps. But that varies depending on physical exertion, and diet. My body is also obviously borrowing from the future because after a number of weeks of that when i go off work if i'm not careful with diet and stuff the body just goes into a hiberation type state where i'm sleeping a lot, and the more i sleep the more the body wants to sleep (oversleeping).

Extending this (More Ghost in the shell stuff)...

How much has Comlink and cyberware crossed over into "tactical computer"?

Scanning a dead body, identifying:

1) Cause of death... bullet wounds, what calliber? (cybereyes/video recorder, commlink)

2) Infared temperature readings... get body temp and estimate time of death... (Thermal vision, commlink)

Other:

Shadow/Deformation analysis... Scanning a (meta)human in and doing an analysis of their clothing movements.. identify any concealled items (that bulge in their back is a gun)... (video recorder, vision enhancements, commlink).

Automatic rangfinding of all objects (Ultrasound)

As Shadow_Profit said above.. automatic facial scanning, sending that data to a browse agent program to get information about a subject.


... All of which could be running as a background process..

Dodger is just walking along when a tag over a man next to him flashs "Threat", looking at the man he sees his cyberware detected the teltale bulge of a heavy pistol tucked in his pants. Getting a better look, the system has a 90% confidence it is a thunderbolt... LoneStar Plainclothes cop? better be chill...

Ah. Such is a similar reflection of many a programming workplace. A poorly ran one at least.

As for the constant updating of information, you don't even need to be in active mode. just a good agent loaded with a high browse utility.

Or a good configuration, combined with an Analyze and Browse set to Autoscan.

Or just the loony body-modders who want to get multiple personalities.

DID is not the 'real name' so much as it is the NEW name.

sometime in the last 15 years or so they renamed it as the Psychiatric proffession worldwide decided to stop treating it as multiple people in one body and treat it as one person who is deluding themselves into believing they are many people


this was done for legal reasons as a court case came up asking if you can lock all personalities away for the crimes of one

Actualy I looked at papers writen by psychologists on the subject. And the papers I read on both sides it still esentialy boils down to 'this is what we think. we have no proof'. There are psychologists who believe that this disorder exists certainly. And prehapse even the majority agree upon it. But just because people agree upon something does not make it fact. Afterall, the world agreed the world was flat.

But just for you I'll ask the few pyschologists I know and I'll see what their opinions on the matter are.

According to the 'Abnormal Psychology' textbook (2004) sitting behind my toilet at home, scientists are not clear if it's real or not, since it's not provable either way (and has been proven false in some cases). Evidence would seem to indicate in most cases it's really something else, and not really 'multiple personalities', but it has not been determined for certain yet.

Hahnsoo My contempt in my post was at the decision by the American Medical Association to do the rename, and to treat all such cases as not really multiple people in one body...

The reason for my contempt is that I am DID...

I have studied the change in how it is looked at and treated in the last couple of decades.

The new treatment is to convince the person that the different personalities are not really different people. and to get te core personality to shoulder the responsibility and guilt for the acts of all personalities.

I have known two other DID cases where the above mentioned treatment was used... and listed as successful when the patients supposedly 'took responsibility for all their facets and actions' and were released from commitment. both suicided within 3 weeks because they could not live with the guilt of wat some of their other selves had done in the past.

I had no intention of offending those with DID in my post

I had EVERY intention of offending the psychiatric profession.

I apologize if I have offended in any way, as that was not my intention. I share a contempt of the psychiatric/psychology academic community, but I've also known some good individual psychiatrists as well. In any case, I'm wary of any sort of evidence on anything related to the medical field, with all the misinformation on the internet nowadays, and I tend to stick to the published medical journals rather than the "New York Times" and Google.

I'd like to clarify that the AMA really has no say of what goes in the DSM IV, although they do sponsor certain publications for all medical fields. They are only a political lobbying body, not the national medical regulatory body.

Boy this thread went a long way from where I started it...

Lets take a different step.

A character has installed:
at least a rating 2 skillwire system installed.
the equivilant of a cybercom and a sim module.
jolt-alert awake cyberware.

Would it be possible to create a CYBERNETIC system that could do the following:

Lets say this character is an average wage slave.. and has a boring 1 hour commute to work each day. Would it be possible for him to go to sleep while still under the RAS-Override (to eliminate distractions from the outside world) and have his cybernetics setup with a simple Activeskill program to activate at 06:00 am every morning and:

1) get out of bed.
2) take a shower.
3) brush teeth, comb hair.
4) put on clothes.
5) get in car.
6) turn on car, set 'autonav' on the grid system to go to "work."
7) when arrive at work, exit car.
Go upstairs to his cubicle.
9) sit in chair.
10) Deactivate RAS-Override, activate jolt-alert to wake up the character.

Such an active skill would have to be specially coded with either a complete schematic of the character's apartment, car, and work... and other things like a list of clothes to wear (don't wear the scuba outfit to work!)...

Of course, in 2070 most wageslaves are already in a corporate ecology or can matrix-commute.. but the concept is more interesting to me...

Can an activesoft be programed with the equivilant of an "agent" program to manipulate your body in a basic rudimentary way?

Nope - Skillsofts just represent memory.

If you assume that you can "programm" or "drive" a human being like a drone ... Give him/her a pilot with "hygienic autosoft" *gg*