>But I'm not talking about just casually using a datajack, because I
>don't casually use a computer. I use one fairly immersively. Spend
>at least ten hours every day jacked into a computer, and your brain is
>going to have one language being pushed out of prominence as a new one
>becomes more commonly used. Your thinking patterns will start to
>adapt to the computer - something that is by definition partially
>inhuman. Not in the sense that your computer will tell you to kill
>people, but in the sense that you'll be distanced from the real world.
> Distancing oneself from humanity makes it very difficult to avoid
>becoming at least a little inhuman.

Bah, Eliot, that already happens, at least to me. I spend long enough focused on one activity, then I spend the next several hours after I've finished interpreting everything through shades of that activity. It usually happens with games - System Shock 2 had me instinctively wanting to avoid/destroy security cameras around my workplace for a couple of days. But there's a funny old thing about the human mind - it adapts. You unplug, you're a little weird for a while, but then you get right back into the swing of things. I mean, hell, if you're using your computer "fairly immersively" even with today's I/O hardware, and you're not a little spaced when you come up for air, then you're not human now, in my book. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/