batteries), new portable power mechanisms (e.g. fuel cells and supercapacitors), and significant improvements in the efficiency of integrated circuit chip technology relative to power consumption and heat dissipation. In the two-component architecture that we described above, power provision can be assumed to derive from the containing body of the transcendent personal device and subsequently provided to the trusted core agent. Existing families of power quality sensors within the trusted core agent then allow it to determine that power has been continuously applied. Consequently, the trusted core agent is expected to continuously monitor the security state of the body, allowing trust in the operation of the transcendent personal device to build over long periods of effective behavior; in essence, trust is derived from reputation. Indeed, current battery technology allows for the recharging of batteries within the body while operation of the transcendent personal device continues unabated. The inclusion of enhanced supercapacitors offers the prospect of a much longer latency between the complete dissipation of battery power and the availability of recharging facilities.

If power is continuously available, then the trusted core agent can reasonably perform the tasks of securely monitoring time and location. A secure time-stamp emanating from the trusted core agent and a secure location stamp will allow the transcendent personal device to more completely form a deictic center for the person within the external, physical and electronic worlds. This capability will change the form of the language through which policy is conveyed, allowing something closer to natural communication through deictic conversation on the part of the bearer rather than a brief from the bearer’s attorney. In other words, the device offers the prospect of encompassing the role of shaman in purely human social orders.

Unlike the human mind, computers are not typically driven entirely by what we might think of as sensory stimuli. Even real-time, sometimes called process control computers have some significant level of background tasking that they perform whenever all other sensory input is quiet. In general in computer systems, the continuous flow of awareness on the part of the computer is driven by a continuous, temporally repetitive stimulus; in other words, a clock. At repetitive intervals, a clock stimulus is emitted that drives a succession of recursive task queues; every 17 milliseconds perform a task off of this queue, every 34 milliseconds perform a task off of this queue, and so on. In this way, a computer prevents a single task from completely monopolizing the machine. In Chapter 6, we considered what would happen if the human mind were to dedicate itself to consideration of the statement “This sentence is false.” We suggested that the mind is able to limit the degree to which it might dwell on such a thought. In the case of computers, the basic underlying mechanism that would allow one to build software that might mimic selectiveness of the human mind would be a clock driven, hierarchical series of task queues that determine what a processor is thinking about at any instant. Even with a periodic clock stimulus, of course, one still must be careful to enforce preemptive scheduling of task queues. Otherwise, a task that is going to consider the statement “This sentence is false.” might get control of the processor and never relinquish it. That way madness lies.

As a purely recurrent indicator of the passage of time, a clock signal can be derived by applying power to an oscillator circuit; when power is halted, the clock signal stops. Within a transcendent personal device, a continuous clock, even if emitted from the body of the transcendent personal device, allows both the body and the trusted core agent to maintain continuous vigilance over themselves and their connection to the outside world. Recall that back in Chapter 4 we discussed a view put forward by Klaus Scherer that emotions provide for cognitive consideration that lies between sensory input and motor system response, and that the level of emotional response establishes the effective time interval within which to effect a motor response to sensory input.

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