World Building is Fun (Part 1: Internal Personal Technologies)

This is the first of a series (hence the "part one") of various elements within the different worlds I've created, am working on, or will be working on. Like Tolkien and his Silmarillion, creating a solid mythology or technological hierarchy is crucial for a believable world in which your characters live. 

So let's get to it. 

Today's episode is about the development and acceptance of technological components within the body, a huge "ick factor" for a lot of people today, and a hurdle many people can't imaging getting over. 

History of Internal Personal Technology (IPT)

IPT began in the mid 2000's.

Body artists and Trans-humanists pushed the limits of this concept by inserting magnets, RFID chips, and other simple chip sets coated with sterile medical grade plastics into the sub-dermal layers of their skin in order to “feel” electromagnetic fields or gain access to wireless key entries with the wave of a hand.

It was exciting and edgy for this tiny fraction of society, but the majority of the populous remained skeptical, even creeped out by the concept. This perception continued for several additional years until the year 2021. This was the year the medical technology firm Heliomedic commercially released a refined gastrointestinal filtration system intended to help individuals with Inflammatory Bowel Disease called the HX-1 (Heliomedic Extraction System version 1.) The system was profoundly reliable, scalable, and above all, inexpensive.

The FDA trials before the release had created a media storm over the product. Not only did it do what it advertised, those who tested the HX-1 system reported increased vitality and multiple regenerative side-effects. It was touted as the technological fountain of youth.

History's first commercially viable IPT device was a screaming success. Within the first three years, every US health insurance company included the HX line of internal filters in their top tier coverage as a preventative care measure. After only five years and a handful of refinements, over fifty percent of movie stars, politicians and any random millionaire had undergone the outpatient procedure.

Public opinion had changed. A machine brought into one's body was no longer aberrant, it was the norm.

So by the year 2029, when Dr. Shannon Baker, a professor of neuroscience from Caltech, lead a cross-disciplinary team to develop, then patent, the first addition coil, it was greeted with an enthusiastic reception. An elegant device which could wrap around any of the cerebral nerve bundles and intercept, record, or augment the signal passing through.

Finally, the ability to view files without enhanced contacts, listen to music or conversations without ear plants, even smell across the nextnet without clunky atomizers. All delivered by a simple out-patient procedure... and a lot of money.

Future history. Fun, right?