[Cyborg] various cyborg ideas from Daemon and Freedom(TM)

[travis+ml-cyborg at subspacefield.org]

Been listening to audiobook versions of Daniel Suarez's books
Daemon and Freedom(TM).

A few ideas from there:

Haptic vest - Also called "the third eye", this vest stimulates the skin,
making it a giant input device.  By rendering your surroundings as perceived
via e.g. IR, ultrasonics or RADAR, you can effectively see in the dark, or
when blinded.  The characters in the stories use them to receive messages
from robots and alerts from newsfeeds.

Heads Up Display - the primary output device for Darknet operatives.
Often seen as eyeglasses.

Bone Conduction Speakers - so you can hear (the computer, or your teammates)
even in firefights.

And of course there were gloves for somatic gesture inputs.

One of the characters has a laser-induced plasma channel (LIPC) gun...
this is what I asked about on the Noisebridge list, where a particular
UV wavelength ionizes air, making it conductive, so that you can
stun people remotely.

Also, here's one I remembered:

Subvocalization microphones - pick up neck movement associated with speaking,
capable of picking up inaudible sounds.  This would mean you could communicate
quickly and silently, possibly without any movement of the mouth.  Perhaps one
could train a computer to recognize not sound, but muscle movements as well.

So what's the state of these?

My friend says Vuzix has the best HUD form factor so far.

He also says that this augmented reality system may be the leader:
http://www.layar.com/
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