[The Godfather]

If the year comes that portable computers have become fast enough and the market is driving toward miniaturization, how should technologists gain your trust in order to make you the ultimate loyal customer?

1. Where should it be implanted?
2. What size/weight?
3. Energy requirements?
4. Other maintenance requirements?
5. What senses should it hook up to?
6. What should it be able to control?
7. What should it be able to display/say?
8. Should it enable telepathics?
9. Upgradeability?
10. What color should it be?
11. Should it be a gateway to bionics?

[Waragainstsleep]

1. Somewhere safe to access but where it won't get damaged or damage you if you fall over.
2. As small and light as possible, obviously.
3. Minimal so it lasts as long as possible.
4. As little as possible, as upgradable as possible. You don't want to be performing medical procedures if you can help it, even minor ones, too expensive to perform too risky in terms of legal liability. Would you want someone slicing you up at a Genius Bar?
5. This depends entirely on what the implant is for.
6. See 5.
7.See 5.
8. If it can.
9. See 4.
10. Its an implant, why would this matter? I guess luminous orange or green so a surgeon can find it easily.
11. Sure, why not?

[P]

1. Back of the neck is statistically the place with the lowest risk of infection. Nice and close to lots of nerves as well.
2. Itsy bitsy. Since you don't need a screen, that removes a large part of the power requirements, and thus the heavy battery. What power needs there are, however...
3. It's not too hard to make a chip that uses less than a watt - seems reasonable.
4. Charging it, somehow. That must be done through the skin, but without enough magnetic fields to fry your brain. Tricky.
5. All of them, if you're in there anyway.
6. Nothing. Feed to sensory nervous system. An interesting thing is how it should react to commands to your muscles - ignore, copy or intercept? The last is tricky, but could be very useful for VR.
7. Anything.
8. Enhanced handsfree phone with integrated ability to send movie clips, but not subconsciously.
9. Software only, in that case.
10. Whatever. Semi-transparent, probably, as that's what a plastic casing would be anyway if you keep the additives as low as possible.
11. Sure.

[rickey939]

i'mScared.

[Big Mac]

WB rickey939.

It would be cool if Apple R&D were working on nanotech iDevices. I really can't see anything like that happening any time soon, with all the health, security and privacy concerns associated with it. Maybe for those futurists on the very cutting edge, but the public in general wouldn't adopt anything like that for a long time to come, IMO.

[Chongo]

Don't give them any ideas. That sounds too much like

16 Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, 17 so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.

[beb]

This is one of those really dark gray areas where the technology is somewhat here. However, the details of how it would actually implemented could take some time to sort out by corporations, governments and societies. What do we want the iDevice to do? Obviously, being an interface with computers via Neuromancer or a Ghost in the Shell type of scenario would be near the top of the list. The iDevice could be the point of reference for other implanted devices. Replacement eyes, arms, legs could all be controlled or networked from the iDevice. Gene and other sorts of physical, possibly mental therapies could possibly be enabled with future versions of this device.

The real questions I have are how does artificial intelligence and nanotech play out with this concept? Does this mean that some future AI could possibly control a bunch of "iDevice" enabled humans? If we use the Ghost in the Shell example, the character of Motoko Kusanagi was essentially a human brain enabled with android-like abilities. Does the iDevice enabled person that may have a couple of artificial limbs still have the same rights as a human? What if the only remaining organic part of the person is the brain? Anyway, it just seems like this is a very slippery slope without very careful and strategic planning and governance of how this device would need to work before it would be implemented en masse.

[Waragainstsleep]

Its a fascinating premise, how would a human brain develop with half a dozen extra eyes for example? (If you had them from an early age)

[beb]

Anyway, it just seems like this is a very slippery slope without very careful and strategic planning and governance of how this device would need to work before it would be implemented en masse.

Uh, this is what happens when I write half-drunk. I make little sense. This sentence should read....

Anyway, it just seems like this is a slippery slope. Very careful strategic planning and governance of how this device should work and be implemented needs to occur before the device could be implemented en masse.