Cyberbrain Maladaptive

[Guest guest]

During some reading today and I came across something that reminded my of AS.

There is a series called Ghost in the Shell. It is set in a future cybernetic bodies and people can have their brains enhanced and wired to communicate directly with the Internet. Some aspects of the series I don't like, but won't mention those at this time, but other things are interesting. This novel that I read cleared up a few finer points that were not explained in the anime series.

Cutting to the chase, however.

Cyberbrains have pretty much become the standard in the world of GitS. Virtually every adult and even most children and teens have one. I saw almost because there are some who choose not to get them and others who can't. Those who can't were called "Cyberbrain Maladaptive."

What was interesting about this was how the Maladaptives were treated. ONce the condition was diagnosed, usually in childhood, people's attitudes toward them would change. Other would tell the parents how sorry they were for their child's disability. They were in special "slow" classes because they couldn't keep up with their cyberbrained peers, who shunned them socially anyway. After all, what fun is it to have a friend that you actually have to talk to rather than communicate directly to their brain from almost any distance, like having a cellphone in your head? They were more and more pushed to the margins because even print media mostly became computer code, like barcodes on items today so that more information could be packed into the same space, which the Maladaptives could not read, of course.

My point is, that these people were fully operational, but because their brains were a little different, they were cast out of society.

Now, eventually a procedure was developed that allowed Cyberbrain Maladaption to be "cured." It involved the use of micromachines and other processes to literally rework the brain so that it could be made compatible with Cyberbrains. In other words, they were made "normal."

I doubt that Autism and the like had any relation to this, but the parallel here with what many of us have had to deal with is uncanny.

Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape in the new year.