What if you had the opportunity to have an all-in-one communication chip implanted in your brain? What if you could use it to text, video chat, check the newest social media platform that 65% of the population now uses, listen to music, watch videos, play video games, read and write stories, draw, and hundreds of other things all in your head? Nobody could watch you, nobody could peek over your shoulder, nobody could get into your accounts when you weren't looking. Assume that if you're underage, your adults couldn't see or track anything you did online.
If you had this one chance, would you miss your chance to blow or would you capture it?
What would you look like if you were connected to your device? Would you be sitting in front of the TV, giggling at something horrifying while the adults watched "Everybody Loves Raymond" re-runs? Would you be staring at the ceiling in your room for hours, reading something that you were afraid of people finding before? Would you miss the bus because you didn't notice it even came while you were watching your favorite YouTuber's newest upload? Would you even be able to walk while you did any of these things, or would you get used to it? What would people look like, stumbling around in the real world? Would it be like when Pokemon Go came out and hordes of trolls were creeping around neighborhoods and public parks, getting sunburned and tripping over their own feet? Would it make it easier for you to be more active, or would you never leave your house again?
If you had the chance to use this device, would you ever unplug? Would you keep it running in the background while you were asleep? Would you be able to stand the silence in your skull if you ever did unplug?
What if, once it was implanted, it couldn't be removed or shut off? Would you still take it? Would you just leave it idling in the background, refusing to use it?
Would you use it to cheat in school, since nobody can watch you?
Would you use it to cheat on your partner(s), since nobody can watch you?
Would you use it to indulge in hobbies or k1nks that aren't socially acceptable, since nobody can watch you?
Would you use it to do something illegal if you knew the police wouldn't catch you doing it, since nobody can watch you?
What if you were entirely untraceable and you had a guarantee from the chip creator that your individual chip could never be sequenced or followed, even by the police or the government? What would you use this superpower to do? Would you use it for good? For evil? Only for yourself? Would you just revel in the fact that you were free to be yourself and do whatever you want to without abusing the privilege?
What if it turns out that government officials were watching you all along? (Real shocker there, yeah?) What if they've been tracking you - every MB of media you absorbed, every neural impulse of creation you contributed, every URL you visited, everything you ever bought or sold, every conversation you ever had?
What if certain government officials were able to send signals to your chip to control you, persuade you to do things, even short-circuit your brain if they felt the need to? What if this happened under the current administration? What would you do? Would you change your habits, or would you take the risk? How many people do you think they would do this to?
What if we saw a reenactment of Stephen King's Cell because of a distorted signal? (In the book, a brain-disrupting signal was sent through cell phones and radios that turned everybody who heard it into a zombie. Over the course of the book, the zombies gain the ability to communicate with each other and reach superhuman intelligence. The humans are cornered, but I won't ruin the ending for you. He still claims it will be a TV series one day.)
How would we begin to combat a threat that has unlimited access to all of the knowledge stored on the internet? Would the only people who weren't affected (those who had never had the implants) be able to end the crisis? After all, those who opted out or couldn't afford it would be inherently different from those who chose to get the implant.
Would you be paranoid enough to opt out?
Do you think that enough people would opt out that the implant would be like Google Glass - a complete flop?
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Job Openings: Philosophy and Prompts
FanficThis is a collection of nonsense and story ideas that I don't have the time or interest to include in my one-shot collections, but would be interested in reading. Beware of crack and existential crises beyond this point. This list probably won't be...
