In 1982, William Gibson wrote a collection of short stories called Burning Chrome. Two years later, he wrote Neuromancer. They were not the first example of cyberpunk, but Neuromancer was undeniably one of the most influential.
Here is one image he gave us, and the two and a half corresponding real world implementations.
(Neuromancer, 1984)
"Case was twenty-four. At twenty-two, he'd been a cowboy, a rustler, one of the best in the Sprawl. He'd been trained by the best, by McCoy Pauley and Bobby Quine, legends in the biz. He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacked into a customized cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination known as the matrix.
The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games...Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding into the distance..."
1) Users, most especially cyber-cowboys, would connect to their computers by jacking in. Plugging their brain directly to their computer through a port in the back of the head. The idea would later be seen in film in Johnny Mnemonic (a short story written by Gibson), but is perhaps best known from The Matrix. Plug yourself in, and control an avatar in a virtual world.
Of course, plugging your brain into a computer is a thing of science fiction. In reality, its all wireless.
http
/www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/medicalproducts/braingate.jsp
In 2003 a Massachusetts based company Cyberkinetics built BrainGate. Now up for FDA approval, BrainGate allows an implanted user to wirelessly control their computer. Primary purpose seems to be medical, allowing interaction and control of devices for quadriplegics.
2) When users jack in to the matrix, they're not just controlling the monitor at the desk in front of them. Rather, they're actually seeing that consensual hallucination, the clusters and constellations.
http/artificialretina.energy.gov/howartificialretinaworks.shtml
http
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthetic
A number of teams of scientists, working with a variety of technologies, are almost there. The motivation for the technologies are all to help the blind see, but a number of them involve taking data from an external feed and stimulating the optic nerve. At least one of the technologies is currently in clinical trials.
http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6368089.stm
http
/www.io.mei.titech.ac.jp/research/retina/#link
[2.5) The last component is of course, "the graphic representation of data."
Linden Lab's Second Life is the classic example of this, but it hasn't caught on. However, look at Worlds of Warcraft and other MMORPGs, with black market economies directly measurable in dollars. Whether Second Life, or something else, virtual, graphic environments already exist.]
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