Ten, nine, eight: my classroom timer blinking away the final seconds. How I loathe what comes next! At this point I always wish I could take Pink Floyd's old advice to leave kids alone. If those are butterflies in my stomach, the bastards have claws. Three, two, one...
My scalp tingles in what the ViewNet bible refers to so casually as "prelude to visual simulation through direct cortical stimulation." Prelude to nausea would be more honest. Suddenly the rear half of my skull lights up internally as some electronic demon shoves the equivalent of two lidless eyes into the back of my brain, forcing me to stare into blank brightness where no brightness belongs.
Of course my real eyes take to shrieking that they're still straddling my nose, still the boss of all things optical, instigating a tug-of-war with the new bass-ackwards viewpoint. The room, as usual, starts twirling despite its drawn shades and dimmed bulb. The trick now is keeping both my balance and my breakfast. Not by accident, I'm sitting down.
Far too gradually, the carousel brakes and finally stops. I rub my jaw, which aches from clenching.
I hear that some people who've had no more training than me can see in two directions simultaneously about now. But why risk a brain-hernia? It's easier to simply switch attention to and fro, from the scene in front to the simulated posterior display: the "occipital subjective presentation."
If we're talking theory, an OSP is a fantastic idea, making use of the emptiness beyond the normal visual field and placed so that you're not tempted to keep turning your head. The practice is something else. I keep hoping that some saint of a technician will invent a way to put all needed information into a standard "heads-up" subjective display without essentially blinding the user. I also keep hoping the White Sox will take the pennant and the Bulls will find another Michael Jordon....
My stomach finally settles. Normally, the worst is over.
)
