Cyberpunk Tech 8

The MIT developed an exosceleton that attaches to your legs and helps you carry an backpack. More here. (Via boing-boing)

Cyberpunk Tech 7

human brain / computer interfaceIn my little series of Cybepunk tech allready available today: The brain-computer interface. The very core of every cyberpunk book – the ability to plug yourself into the matrix.

Well, today you can use it to surf Second Life. Second life is NOT the virtual reality I imagined reading Neuromancer, but some like it there:

All a user has to do to control his/her avatar is imagine performing various movements. The activity monitored by the headpiece is read and plotted by an electroencephalogram, which relays it to a computer running a brain wave analysis algorithm that interprets the imagined movements. A keyboard emulator then translates the data into signals which can be used to control the movements of the user’s on-screen avatar in real-time.

As usual, boing-boing has the details (including a link to a video)

Zombie Drug

I found an article about Scopolamine on boing-boing. It’s a really scary drug, taking your free will away and allready available. Criminals love it – they can force the victim to give them all its money or use them sexually. Its also very likely to kill the user right away. That makes it instant cyberpunk 2020 game material for me. I figured I would need some hard game rules for the drug, so my first stop was Ocelots Drug Lab 101 and the wonderfully helpful Javascript Tool Night-flyer provided.

This is the result:

Scopolamine (Zombie Drug)

Drug Effects:
HypnoticUntimed Side Effects:
Death
Drug Features:
Longer DurationTimed Side Effects:
Loss of Inhibition
Memory Loss
Totals:
Strength: +5
Difficulty: 21
Duration: Long
(1d10 hours)
Legality: Type A Illegal
Drug Form: Powdered/Snorted
Time to Effect: 1d2 Min
Purchase Price: 0 (50eb)

Since Ocelots Rules are mainly aimed at creating game balancing rules, the drug ist without a purchase price – who would willingly take the drug? So I assigned a price tag of 50eb – seems reasonable to me.

[Scopolamine] is as close to pure evil as it gets, a tiny amount of the powder administered to the victim causes one of two effects, a) death, or b) complete loss of free will. Criminals are usually hoping for the latter, as it enables them to tell victims to empty their bank accounts, give away their car, perform sex acts, basically whatever the criminal dictates.

This is where Scopolamine has got its reputation as the “zombie drug”, victims appear completely sober and rational, but they’re really just automatons. (Source for the description: boing-boing)