You've heard about it, you've read about it. Many of you have put on the viewfinders - seen and heard what the twisted minds of the cloud made possible, and have put together for your consuming pleasure. A few of you have actually done it, making the final connection between our naturally computing brains and the progeny of our technological lust.
I'm talking about the notorious neurocannular shunt, the biotechnical wonder that makes the cloud an entirely new universe for you to explore. I consider the following five items to be imperative for a good trip to the cloud, plugged or wireless, and for any amount of time.
The Shunt
- First things first, you need a can, aka shunt, cannular, jack, cloudjack, unnatural abomination, etc. Technically known as the Neurocannular Shunt, as coined originally by Tad Williams in a piece of sci-fi turned reality. It could have been as easily known as a cyberjack, but somewhere William Gibson pissed off the wrong cat in Silicon Valley. Here are their wikis.
You can find locked shunts from any ISP in your area, and most carriers even have on-site facilities or partnerships with local companies that will implant the same day. You can find unlocked and used shunts on the cloud, or in a few small retailers in your area. In this case you must find your own implant services. Pray you take my advice when I say go find yourself the most reputable implant company you can afford. Big-box retailers usually shy away from biotech, because they don't have the room - or the liability insurance - for it.
The Rig
- A rig for your shunt. For most people this will be taken care of in the service agreement when you go to the store to pick out your shunt. It will most likely be a standard broadband cable in the living room, where you can set up a hammock or what have you. The 'rig' in this case is the carrier's listening station nearest you; probably some vintage blades packed away in a shanty underneath your neighborhood cell tower. This is the cheapest way to go, because the gubment still subsidizes the hell out of broadband carriers, in hopes that someday we will have the same saturation as the Eastern Hemisphere. But I digress - that's another post entirely.
Some of you - hell, probably any of you that read this blog seriously - will want to provide yourselves a home-based rig: a computer between you and the cloud, which gives certain advantages such as anonymity, add-on modules, and the use of bots.
Finally, if you are very rich, very extravagant, very geek chic, or just plain crazy, you can use a wireless adapter and be online twenty-four-seven. Wireless rigs are usually limited bandwidth, so you won't get the full experience, but you will definitely look verr verr cool walking down the street with doublesight.
The Place
- A hammock. Trust me when I say your couch is not enough. First of all, you can't rest your head back on a couch without bending the cable that's jacked into the back of your neck and causing excruciating pain. Secondly, bedsores are caused by suffocating the skin. A hammock alleviates both of these major issues, is simpler to set up, and is far more comfortable in the long run.
The Sustenance
- A protein drip. Something that feeds you liquid protein, so you don't dehydrate or starve, or both. Those of you with wireless should not forget to wear a hydration system, like a Camelbak or a Coleman Waterman, filled with your favorite flavor. I'm partial to the pineapple-grape flavor of Profil, myself.
Don't Forget The Rules
If you get hungry or tired, feel overly emotional, sensory deprived or incensed, or at all stressed-out by anything you experience, jack out immediately. The cloud is a disruptive ecosystem, much like the Wild West, and you do not need to risk any trip being a terminal trip. Other than basic common sense, You should have:
- A timer! For most of you, this won't be a problem due to the fact your ISP only allows two hours per session. Many of you however, like me, have applied the simple hack described here to bypass the auto-timer. If you play WOW, you know what I'm talking about. In this case, you need to set-up a scheduled eject command into your shunt's firmware; or you can rig a simple alarm clock timer by following these instructions found on the Instructables channel.
I actually use a variant of both methods, plus a third: I also have an emergency eject command linked to a bot I've set up to troll IM traffic. The bot runs off my rig, so there is no cycle distribution (read, untraceable). It pulls my plug when I send it a coded message. Those of you who are afraid to roll your own bot, or rig, can use Freebot, a distributed model coded by J-6. Freebot has a little-known command buried within, just strike up a conversation and ask it to run '911 eject,' you'll be staring at your own ceiling before you know it.
Follow these most basic tenets, and in no time you will have the best experiences the cloud has to offer.
Braxton Pipp
This work by Michael W. Hyde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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