Holothetes

(A cover of The Avatar and Lake Windermere where we were today.)

Poul Anderson,The Avatar, XXIII.

A human brain and nervous system can be integrated with a properly designed computer not by wires to the head but by electromagnetic induction. The computer stores and processes data and carries out mathematico-logical operations almost instantaneously while the brain supplies creativity and flexibility and continuously rewrites the program better than a computer alone can because the brain packs trillions of cells into a kilogram.

"Furthermore, linkage gives humans direct access to what they would otherwise know only indirectly." (p. 192)

Does it? That is the part of the concept that I question. An example given is that an operator simultaneously sees a spectrum and knows its wavelengths and intensities and that this is like directly sensing the data as if with new, powerful and sensitive, organs. Just as, in ordinary experience, we not only receive but also interpret sensory impressions, the most advanced linkers, now called holothetes, are supplied with theory as well as with data and thus enter an intuitive mode. Thus, e.g., a holothete directs force-fields that direct ions to manipulate amino acids within proteins. By direct perception, the holothete intuits what to do just as the organism of a sportsman, an acrobat or a pedestrian intuits how to move without conscious thought.

How this works in practice, we will address shortly.