The Last Word On Nothing

Item code: Partial transcript
Date: 20330503 05:06:35
Source: NeoBrane 1.8 cortical interface ExoRAM®™ cache
Note: Data retrieval partial due to implant damage

got it done last year because Noah told me it did multiple orgasms for men. Before that I had the Neuron.XI. Which was fine, but it didn’t do that. Actually they specifically said it was impossible, something about how you couldn’t make threads long enough to synchronise overclocking in the hippocampus, or the insula, and a bunch of other deep brain shit I don’t remember. But then Noah was like “uh case in point.”

of course it was noah. gross

I know but he was right. It was really good for a few months

this is teetering on the edge of things I don’t want to know

Sorry.

seriously though you got a neobrane because of **noah**? was that ever going to turn out any other way?

No but he was right, it did work. Except then Kara got an upgrade on her Cosmos and there was a synching glitch with the NeoBrane chassis which meant that we were coming at different times and it kept asking me to upgrade and they kept using more tactics. One time it actually suspended me right at point of orgasm and said you can either upgrade or watch a one minute ad

!

A crypto wallet ad. 

is that when you started looking for the jailbreak forums

Well yeah I was like you know I’m the one who paid for this thing. I’m the one who had the surgery. This is MY implant in MY head. 

dude that is so dangerous 

I’m not a moron. I was careful. I didn’t go in through the verse. 

what? so how did you – like – access it??

I taught myself how to use a Laptop.

… are you fucking with me? 

No. Actually I’m using one right now.

youre **typing**? 

ahahahahahaha i shall think by using my fingers! 

sorry i’m sorry. thats just so.  ive never even seen one in outspace.

It’s not that bad. There’s times when it’s actually kind of better.

i was trying to figure out why there was so much delay. this is so wild. maybe we can talk about that for another story. my editor would be all over a story about using a **keyboard**  oh my god

Yeah, sure. I could teach you how to use it.

we’re going to bring back fingerthinking! anyway, sorry, this is really off topic – so. were you at all worried that everyone on those forums is utterly insane?

I mean the simo ones, yes, obviously, but there’s a lot of right-to-repair people in there too. They’re super political but they’re not nuts. And it turns out you CAN jailbreak implants and the risks are pretty much what you’d think. Number one no push updates or upgrades, so within 5 years at the OUTSIDE it’s obsolete in your head which is the one thing they were all telling us it would never be.

“Memristive Threads Become You”

Right exactly plus there’s something about the shape memory alloy that deforms without a persistent software reminder. But I was expecting all that. I guess what got me curious was the explant stuff.

yeah that’s what I wanted to talk about.  extremely scary

Well – the R2R forum guys said the procedure was way less risky than what people think. You get so many stories about people dying after, but did you know the actual number last year was only 50? And that’s out of like 20,000 people got explanted, they never tell you that number. So those aren’t great odds, but they aren’t what you think

nope, still terrifying. what was the plan though? jailbreak it until it stopped working, get the explant and then get reimplanted with a better model later?

Well that was kind of the original plan I guess. 

what changed?

I met this guy on the forums. His name was Dave and he has epilepsy and he got the first exo implant, this was really early on. Did you know when they first started making brain implants they said they’d only be for diseases?

When he got it Neomia was a Stanford startup and they just got all the IP from the university and it was going to cure epilepsy forever. Dave said the first ones were amazing – it worked perfectly and loads of people got the implant.

But then KaiserTemporente bought the company and all the patents, and then FTC/FDA happened and they ended up changing the terms of service and you know

oh hahaha I just bet those forum guys are maxx dispensing history lessons about ftcfda

It was OBJECTIVELY BAD to dissolve two major regulatory agencies. I did not need to join an R2R forum to have a keen understanding of this fact. I still cannot get my head around the fact that no one protested.

oh yes protesting, the activity proven time and again to bring about massive change. also who gives a shit i heard those agencies were as bad as the water regulators in england. 

I mean that’s debatable. At least we never had mass murder by brain amoebas. Anyway sorry, maybe I have been spending too much time on R2R. I didn’t mean to get political.

its ok. i get it.

It’s because of what Dave was telling me about what happened right after the first big wave of implants. Before FTC/FDA, they felt risky but ok. People were like “you’re the one who got brain surgery, it’s on you you knew the risks.” But a lot of people did it anyway, like for gaming or workmaxxing or like for porn stuff. Everyone went in with open eyes and they all had to sign a disclaimer

the explantation one? 

Yeah he said it was mostly the same as the one now, but the difference was, especially for the medical stuff, people just figured there was someone making sure that like – there were still rules you had to follow.

you know the golden rule: buyer beware.  

I know, and obviously the markets sort it out in the end. But I get why the R2R guys are so mad. Dave was telling us that when his implant detects a seizure coming on, he has to pay. You know a little bit of money. At first it wasn’t that bad like 25 cents. That’s totally fine. You know like

id pay 25 cents not to have a fucking seizure

Right but then last year it went up to a dollar and that started to get a little weird and then earlier this year it went to a buck 25 and that’s when you start to think about. Like how high is it gonna go? What’s the amount of money where you’re going to start to think, you know. Can I just get away with this one seizure and then I’ll pay to suppress the other ones? What if I start getting more seizures?

was it dave who told you about the sock puppet thing?

Actually my grandmother. A lady in her nursing home has an implant for Alzheimer’s, same thing happened like with Dave’s epilepsy. Her family started having to pay for more juice to “upgrade’” her for their visits.

She isn’t allowed to authorize the payments herself because like people in those BCI homes are considered like not compos mentis or whatever, they don’t let them have Bank access but they have a deal where her family can do it for her. So a lot of the people in the old folks home are like that because if they don’t have the implants nobody visits them.

When it’s on, she’s exactly the person she used to be like 10 years ago. But my grandma was like, she’s actually not there anymore at all when the implant is off. I kind of didn’t believe her at the time, but then Dave told me the implant doesn’t work the way they say it does – it’s not like you know like clearing away that Alzheimer’s or something, like temporarily holding it at bay so the person can be normal and unobstructed. Their brains are actually gone. The company just basically loads old code. So what’s happening is the implant puppets the body with some stuff from their archive storage, so like even though they say stuff and sound like their old selves, there’s nobody home.

I don’t know that sounded like a ghost story to me, but Dave told me he was an engineer before he quit. 

is that when you decided to remove your implant? 

No. The last straw was

END TRANSCRIPT

no further available data from implant 24601

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This story is inspired by a recent review article in JAMA Network that sought to establish definitions and scenarios for neurological device abandonment. That is, what will happen to all the shiny new brain implants now under starry-eyed development when there’s no one left to maintain them, whether that’s because the manufacturer folds or the implantee can no longer afford upkeep. But there are other ways implants can go wrong, and Cory Doctorow’s theories around enshittification were top of mind. The notion of explantation has haunted me since the philosopher Frederic Gilbert explained the ethical landscape to me at an International Neuroethics Meeting in 2018. Christine Kenneally wrote a beautiful story about it in the New Yorker.

Image credit: Jmarchn. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0