| > You could get a phantascopic system planted directly on your retinas, > just as Bud's sound system lived on his eardrums. You could even get > telæsthetics patched into your spinal column at various key > vertebrae. But this was said to have its drawbacks: some concerns > about long-term nerve damage, plus it was rumored that hackers for big > media companies had figured out a way to get through the defenses that > were built into such systems, and run junk advertisements in your > peripheral vision (or even spang in the fucking middle) all the > time—even when your eyes were closed. Bud knew a guy like that who'd > somehow gotten infected with a meme that ran advertisements for roach > motels, in Hindi, superimposed on the bottom right-hand corner of his > visual field, twenty-four hours a day, until the guy whacked himself. -- Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age |