>I didn't play much Shadowrun, but I read a lot of the fluff and
>a lot of the fiction that (I'm told) influenced it (Gibson, et al.),
>and the way black ice always worked in my mind was not lethal voltage
>but rather it reprogrammed your nervous system, shutting down body
>functions.

Well, again, if the system was designed in the only way I can believe that such a system would be, all that would be coming in would be substituted sensory inputs. I suppose it might be possible to induce some kind of seizure through inappropriate stimulation of the visual cortex (that's more or less how photosensitive epilepsy works, IIRC), but again, any properly designed interface would prevent things like that from happening at a level independent of the software. Saying a clever enough hacker could program around that would be like claiming that all the bad guys need is to know your POTS phone number and they can turn off the electricity in your living room. Uh, well, no, not as such. :)

I've revolved this quite a bit in my head over the years, and neither I nor anyone else who's tackled it in my presence has come up with an implementation of the black ice idea that doesn't fail the "no, I don't buy that" test. In any scenario where the design of the interface hardware has any hope of becoming a widely adopted standard, you're just never going to be able to kill somebody with software.

A related matter was also my biggest problem with The Matrix, beyond even the hilariously wacky thermodynamics of the stated reason why the machines keep people around. One is expected to believe that these people are employing a cybernetic interface system that uploads the mind into a computer system, such that if you get disconnected without logging off properly, your mind is cast adrift in the system (and promptly dies because it no longer has a body to support it), while your body dies because it no longer has a mind in it? There isn't a single discipline involved there - electrical engineering, neurology, telecommunications, computer programming - wherein that idea is anything but laughable.

I don't know if anyone has ever worked out the bandwidth requirement for a complete human sensorium, but I would guess that however monumental it might be, it would pale in comparison with the transfer capacity required to FTP an entire human neural map onto a server somewhere in the, what, second or two it takes to jack into or out of the Matrix. Besides which, even if you accept the idea that the mind is just the electrical pattern of the synapses in the brain (which I more or less do), you wouldn't "upload" that to a computer system in a way that meant it was no longer present inside the brain, particularly if you then pile on the conceit that you put it back when you log off.

It is an idiotic movie and I am ashamed that I enjoy it so much. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.