One of the more interesting aspects of early sci-fi that hasn’t made it into reality (yet) is ICE, or security systems that “bite back” with physical feedback, pain, and potentially death. If body interfacing tech continues to develop and cybercrime becomes increasingly prevalent, this does seem like a possibility in a few decades.
Realistically it would never go this route. Instead what we see in China might become more common with social credit but this is also not necessary. A simpler approach is something that already exists. The denial to the online marketplace or just simply removing the ability for an individual to pay for things they need in their basic lives. As we move increasing towards a digital era who is able to access these resources can change. Movements like this will lead to increasingly worse problems as individuals who become trapped in these systems are forced into a life a crime it's an interesting thing to think about.
It's a terrifying thought when your entire life can come to an end just based on something as simple as your name entering into a registry list similar to a no fly list.
I guess you could argue that in order to get correct/useful haptic feedback the full-dive interface has access to your nerves? And the interface is as counter-hackable as anything else in this world?
Thinking in-universe here, where this sort of system exists, wearing an equivalent of a full-dive-condom which prevents the feedback you speak of, would maybe make an operator too slow in responding to countermeasures or make the whole process the mental equivalent of walking through treacle. A skilled operator is more effective without it, despite the higher risk?
All of the above is pretty moot though in the real world, computers can and always will operate at a million times the speed of a person, I can't really see the value proposition of being "in" the computer, when all you'd ever really be doing is deploying icebreakers out ahead of you and waiting for the response
You can also have a worldbuilding in which there are technical difficulties on isolating or filtering the signals across a neurosynaptic link, so most people (other than the most resourceful hackers) have no choice but to expose themselves with a direct neurosynaptic link.
Galvanic isolation of high-speed digital electronics today is already fairly difficult. Imagine adding optical isolaton all the data ports on desktop computers, including the high-speed ones like 20 Gbps USB or Thunderbolt, it's entirely possible but difficult and expensive, sometimes with compatibility issues. USB 2.0 High Speed is a notorious example, it's difficult to isolate (until it was recently solved by some new ASICs from TI and Analog Devices) not because of any inherent technical problems of data transmission, but because its signaling and protocol are not designed with transparent repeaters in mind. Thus, galvanic isolation is only used in highly specialized applications. As a result, a USB Killer can easily destroy most PCs because the signal is often wired straightly into the CPU (SoC).
One can only imagine the difficulties of doing the same for a neurosynaptic link in a Sci-Fi world. For example, in Ghost in the Shell, ICE is in widespread use, meanwhile isolating firewalls do exist but they're rare, mainly used by intelligence agencies. They are also disposable devices and would be completely destroyed after an electrical overstress (not unlike real-world galvanic isolation...) Further, one can use bandwidth limitation to rationalize the "the mental equivalent of walking through treacle" part of your plot.
Of course, as you've pointed out, as computers operate much faster than the human time-scale, the argument of bandwidth is not really that convincing.
We might still have mathematicians, but there was a job that was eliminated by calculators:
Calculators!
We have over time abstracted away the hard-for-people-easy-for-computers tasks to the point often people just do the hard-for-computers stuff, like interpretation of results, and coordination of next steps
Presumably the Net would somehow require physical feedback in order to browse and participate. Or, the functionality would be available (but not required) and ICE would counter-hack the hacker and overpower his local hardware settings and enable the feedback.
A more contemporary example might be something like headphones: as far as I know, limits on sound output are software-based, not hardware. Theoretically a hacker could modify these software limits and output extremely loud sounds.
> A more contemporary example might be something like headphones: as far as I know, limits on sound output are software-based, not hardware. Theoretically a hacker could modify these software limits and output extremely loud sounds.
Seems pretty much impossible.
True, my headphones could be modified for it. In fact I once looked into the firmware of a previous model, and apparently there was 16MB RAM, 2 cores, and sqlite in there. The darn thing could run DOOM if there was a display attached.
But an application doesn't get to talk Bluetooth to my headphones, it only gets to submit audio.
Besides that, audio is logarithmic. If the internal amplifier can produce 2X of the software limit, that only adds 3db. Maybe annoying, but nowhere near bad enough to do serious harm.
Obviously the System can locate the terminal and direct all neighboring IoT devices to attack. Hack the wrong machine and your toster reassembles itself into a killer bot that tries to zap you.
Maybe with direct neyrosynaptic link they would have no way to block their hacked hardware behavior. Assumes ICE will be more advanced/faster than hacker itself
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusion_Countermeasures_Elec...