Silverwall wrote:PlaysWithBees wrote:Another question to consider is whether or not Alannah or the twins will be getting N.E.A.T. Implants.
What is really involved in those implants? Textev States that they were generally implanted shortly after birth as part of the standard medical procedures. Can they also be implanted in an older mature adult? Does Owll have the capability of creating and implanting the interfaces needed to use a neat? We do not know what is actually involved.
I am pretty sure the answer is "No" to all of the above.
In story It would be exceedingly difficult to do so, brain surgery is way beyond anything we have seen owl pull off so far, and I am sure that trying to install in an adult is way more complex than in an undeveloped baby's brain.
Story wise I am sure Webber is using these technologies to highlight what has been lost not as devices he intends to use during the reunification wars on safehold, such devices would only logically be used in story once the conflict moves on the Gbaba.
Earlier I mentioned that I think molecular assembly is probably one of the most interesting social forces in the TF backstory. Brain implants are a close second.
The text only briefly touched on reasons why Merlin wasn't implanting the Inner Circle, and the explanation left a lot of questions unanswered. Probably on purpose. Anyhow, the given explanation was that brain implants would leave visible evidence that would be plainly obvious to a Pasqualite. And while it's unlikely that anyone would be digging around in a member of the Inner Circle's brain, there's always the possibility of massive trauma that would bring a Pasqualite into proximity. Bomb blasts, gunshots, etc. Safehold, as Merlin has constantly reminded us, is a high wear environment.
I’m not sure I buy that argument, but given the presence of
anything in someone’s brain would be irrevocable proof of demon worship, tainting every single thing accomplished, I can understand caution. And it helps RFC avoid the presence of “magic” plot solutions.
Anyhow, there’s a lot we’re still working to understand about the human brain (and boy, that’s an understatement), but current research does give us a few ideas on what a brain implant would have to accomplish in a very broad sense. Of course, there’s a massive chasm between that and being able to design one.
If you look at what happened to Nahrmahn, the text strongly suggests there’s no reason an adult can’t be implanted. That’s what Nahrman’s nanites had to do in order to record his personality. They scavenged his brain and body for materials, and built an implant capable of serving as an interface between a computer (the recording device) and his brain.
Long-term memories are processed, encoded, and stored across multiple structures in the brain. When a memory is recalled, those individual pieces are effectively re-combined. There’s also a lot of interconnectedness here; for instance, sense data can be connected to multiple memories. So the interface had to not only connect to the brain, it had to be able to stimulate the recall of particular memories so it could record the memory, how it was processed on recall, and tons of other data. In computer I/O terms, the interface has to be able to both read and write to the brain’s different structures in order to record in the first place.
Imagine a digital representation of the brain running in parallel to the user’s brain with lots of sensors scattered throughout to monitor neural activity. That’s your implant. When the brain recalls memories, the implant is able to map out the neural connections involved and somehow ‘record’ the data stored in the active neurons. You need the data itself, but you also need the map of how it’s connected to other neurons and the ability to direct the brain to activate particular neurons. Combine the two, and you have your virtual personality.
Nahrmahn’s interface would have had to connect to pretty much every aspect of the brain. It was quick and dirty, as Merlin acknowledges, but that’s just referring to how it was constructed. Scavenging materials from the patient’s brain and body while said body is literally dying isn’t the normal way of doing things. You’d be in a controlled/monitored environment, and use an external source of materials. And given the complexity of the task of recording a person's personality, it's not something you're going to half-ass. The implant designs and software were refined over decades or centuries. You aren't going to pick and choose which aspects you want to cram into Nahrmahn's brain. That leads to bugs, and bugs in this case would lead to possible failure. That's just bad hardware and software engineering.
For a living adult not currently fighting off massive trauma, in a controlled environment, the actual implantation should be simple in light of the TF’s capabilities.
While it’s possible that a child’s brain might be better able to adapt to an implant more fully, but research would suggest that’s largely a function of time. Neuroplasticity of the brain is a process that radically challenged much of what we thought we understood about the brain’s development and structures. Stimuli, such as traumatic brain injury, can force the brain to change and effectively rewire itself. While differing degrees of success have been observed depending on the changes and stimuli in question, it stands to reason that the brain would be capable of adjusting to the presence of a neural implant or the NEAT systems even in adulthood. And that’s assuming that the TF didn’t have the ability to directly affect neuroplasticity, a bet that I wouldn’t be willing to take.
Plus, the original brain implants would have had to have been implanted in humans at some point. Child subjects, and this is ignoring the blindingly obvious ethical problems such an approach would be mired in, would be incapable of providing the sort of detailed feedback needed. Once they became more common place, the process more refined, and the implant's software became more flexible based on collected data, it's likely that they started implanting them earlier and earlier.
The more likely explanation for implanting infants is that they did so because they could. Implants would likely provide all sorts of tangential early developmental benefits, emergency monitoring, identification, medical benefits, etc. Painful though it is to admit, children aren’t immune to massive trauma through accidents. Just like with adults, implants and personality backups would allow doctors to work to repair massive neurological trauma in infants without risking deficits. In that sense, implants and personality backups were the ultimate in insurance policies: no matter what happens to you and your brain, you’d at least have a very good chance of regeneration without lost memories, personality, etc. And once the child starts schooling, the expected NEAT benefits would manifest.
Finally, RFC only mentioned that TF citizens were
normally implanted early in infancy. He didn't say they were
only implanted in infancy, though that's how most people seem to have interpreted the line.
