Is this what technotelepathy will be like?

[tmazanec1]

https://365tomorrows.com/2018/07/25/paddywhack/
We must prevent this future!

[Rynn]

Kind of yes, though there would undoubtedly be filters (improving over time) that would catch errant thoughts. Plus cyberimmune defences against hostile, malicious or disturbing thoughts.

One aspect of technotelepathy that we should probably explore is that symbolic associations are idiosynctatic. By that I mean that the thoughts, feelings and associations we have between things are different from one another, sometimes significantly. I might send "apple" because I'm trying to convey the concept of the fruit, but you might more strongly associate the symbol with the company. This happens in spoken language all the time but in technotelepathy feedback loops would form during interactions where differences in symbolic association cause the sender to transmit more information. This is unlikely to be instantaneous, at least for a biont mind, but way faster than speaking.

A consideration of using this technology is it can be a bit of a slippery slope to a group mind. A lot of people using it all the time will result in their symbolic associations bleeding into each other, averaging out or some becoming dominant. This is really no different qualitatively to conventional communication but the quantitative increase creates a significant difference. For that reason some people/cultures may limit technotelepathy to emergencies, special occasions (i.e. a nationwide consensus debate) or the odd instances they need to convey a complex topic precisely.

[stevebowers]

I am probably wrong, but I think that every biont mind is arranged in an idiosyncratic way. The genetic instructions that combine to build a brain are so concise that they can surely only give the broadest instructions about how to organise the information it recieves. I think this means that anyone with a direct neural interface and an exoself would need to go through a long adaptive process in order to learn how to interpret the data from that interface; and conversely the interface would need to be smart enough to learn how to interpret the mind and brain's idiosyncratic internal signalling codes.

For this reason I suspect that most citizens would start using their DNI and exoself at an early age, while their neural wiring was still plastic enough to adapt to the new signals. This would allow the brain and interface to adapt to each other more easily, and allow the interface to interpret other people's thoughts and relay them to the user in an intelligible fashion.

Just linking two brains together without an interpreter would probably only allow very basic sensations, images and feelings to come through, rather than complex thoughts. Pairs of conjoined twins sometimes are capable of sharing basic sensations and emotions, but not verbal communication.

[Rynn]

I am probably wrong, but I think that every biont mind is arranged in an idiosyncratic way. The genetic instructions that combine to build a brain are so concise that they can surely only give the broadest instructions about how to organise the information it recieves. I think this means that anyone with a direct neural interface and an exoself would need to go through a long adaptive process in order to learn how to interpret the data from that interface; and conversely the interface would need to be smart enough to learn how to interpret the mind and brain's idiosyncratic internal signalling codes.

The mind is certainly idiosyncratic within a certain range. Our DNI installation and features articles do include a period of modelling of the brain and adapting to the user. The most rapid workaround is to have an autodoc perform a high resolution brain scan and pre-install a custom map for the interface to get going with. Technotelepathy would certainly require some form of software to decode the information into a format the other mind can assimilate, though it will still be ideosyncraric in terms of symbolic association.

[Drashner1]

https://365tomorrows.com/2018/07/25/paddywhack/
We must prevent this future!

I don't actually this sort of thing would be likely, at least in an early implementation of this tech.

I would suspect that early 'technotelepathy' would more likely be more similar to a cell phone in your head than being literally linked mind to mind with another person. At least barring some massive breakthrough in understanding how the brain works and it turning out that it works in a way that would make this sort of thing pretty easy. The story also ignores the idea that if you can write a story about this, others could think of this as a potential problem and take steps to prevent it before the tech was rolled out.

Although I don't know if it ever made it into an actual EG article, the OA group has discussed early DNI before and IIRC the conclusion was that it would likely work by linking into the optic and auditory nerves, rather than directly into the brain. Later, more advanced versions would link more directly, and by Y11k we things like skill modules and knowledge downloads 'knowsense' and 'conceptication' and 'totalrecalls' and group minds in various flavors, all of which require a deep connection to the brain and a pretty much total knowledge of how it encodes information to work. But all of that required a lot of R&D and improvements in the state of the art over time, and even in Y11k a lot of it probably actually works more like the modern Internet or power grid or the like where there is quite a lot of infrastructure and baked in know how operating behind the scenes to allow the end user to operate things quickly, easily, and more or less seamlessly. Put another way, your laptop or smart phone don't operate as fully standalone devices, even though they are made to appear that way to you. The same principle might very well apply with these techs in the setting.

My 2c worth,

Todd