Too Much of a Good Thing: Displays in Contacts and "Engagement Disloyalty" in Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. Issue 3 (December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kozioł, Sławomir
• Is Part Of: Extrapolation. Volume 60:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 273
• Page End: 297
• Publication Date: 2019-12
• Subjects: Science fiction -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Science fiction -- Bibliography -- Periodicals; Science fiction; Bibliography; Criticism, interpretation, etc; Periodicals; 809.38762
• DOI: 10.3828/extr.2019.17
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0014-5483

Abstract

Abstract : Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End (2006) depicts a vision of the near future dominated by the use of powerful wearable computers equipped with displays integrated into contact lenses which not only provide non-stop visual access to the internet but also enable augmented reality. Drawing on the recent research indicating negative effects of the distractive potential of the present mobile communication technologies I focus on the capacity of smart contacts as they are represented in Vinge's novel to further encourage a type of multitasking that—because of its negative consequences—could be termed, using the term introduced by the sociologist Erving Goffman, "engagement disloyalty."