 SimStim is literally Simulated Stimulation, and is a logical parallel to VR. Rather than experiencing a full VR or AR experience in which your mind is placed inside a metaverse matrix, a completely simulated reality; or the joys of physical reality -meatspace- with additional VR components grafted on, SimStim opens up a third possibility.
Viewing the world through another person's eyes, hearing with their ears, feeling with their skin, smelling with their nose. Full sensory stimulation of another person, total passivity.
It is a fascinating concept, and one which retains the passive entertainment drive of TV, within a VR capable world.
Cowboys didn't get into simstim, he thought, because it was basically a meat toy. He knew that the trodes he used and the little plastic tiara dangling from a simstim deck were basically the same, and that the cyberspace matrix was basically a drastic simplification of the human sensorium, at least in terms of presentation, but the simstim itself struck him as a gratuitous multiplication of flesh input. The commercial stuff was edited, of course, so that if Tally Isham got a headache in the course of a segment, you didn't feel it.
William Gibson's Neuromancer, page 55
SimStim
SimStim is a concept first created in the VR novel Neuromancer, penned in 1984 by William Gibson. It is the third form of alternate realirty. VR is the replacing of all outside stimulae with artificial. AR is the augmenting of natural stimulae with artificial. SimStim is replacing your natural sensory stimulae, with that of another person.
VWN Image Gallery: Strange Days SimStim Decks in Pictures
A pictoral romp through some of the scenes from the film Strange Days, a film which explores the nature of SimStim in some depth, evaluating how it might be achieved, along with pros and cons - ways the technology could open up lives, and ways it could destroy them.
Strange Days
Local review of the film StrangeDays, in its entirety, and the obligatory purchasing ability.
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