After about one year since I had established my Von Neumann Link, the technology started to become more and more popular: it was not only used for therapeutic purposes, but it invaded the entertainment business. It was soon clear that the link could be exploited to induce mental states of any kind. Some people wanted to be happy, some wanted to reach ecstasy, others preferred to be scared, far more than any horror book or movie or videogame could scare them.
More and more research groups around the globe were focusing on the so-called Neumann-net. The most debated topic was the location of this "place": some speculated it would correspond to what Jung had named the collective unconscious, and the Von Neumann Link had somehow opened a gateway for mankind to gather there; some hypothesized that the exchange of thoughts among human beings actually occurred over the multitude of wired and wireless connections making up the mesh of connectivity we call the Internet.
As a matter of fact, data was actually transferred over the Internet between individuals when they were sharing their thoughts, but the data packets were actually empty. The content had to reside somewhere else. Many quantum physicists, including myself, liked to think that the information being exchanged was entangled at the quantum level with the electrons and photons travelling the Internet, but no one really had any idea about where the entangled subatomic particles carrying the information actually resided.
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The Von Neumann Link
Science FictionThis story revolves around a science-fictional technology I humbly dedicate to the memory of John von Neumann. It is also a story about pandemics and the consequences of lockdowns on people's mental health.
