likely be enabled through wireless RF channels rather than wired connections. If this capability were to be blended with an enhanced understanding of the brain’s memory mechanisms, then it might well be possible to establish a direct communication channel between the transcendent personal device and discrete brain functions. One might speculate that this would represent the definitive interconnection mechanism. Moreover, should it become possible, it would seem that the establishment of a trust infrastructure encompassing both the brain and the external device would be a distinct possibility.

Widespread computer networks such as the Internet present something of an altered sensori-motor experience for the human users of computer tools. Specifically, the characteristics of spatial and temporal locality are more difficult to establish than is the case in the purely physical ecosystem. Despite the admonition of the AT&T advertising campaign to “reach out and touch someone,” tactile response is not readily available through a telephonic connection. The establishment of a policy infrastructure, however, quite often requires the detailed location of any transaction participants in order to fully define the rules of the transaction. For example, in transactions through which a sale of content is concluded, the governing social ecosystem may well establish a tax on the amount of the transaction based on location. Consider that in Texas, sales taxes are applied on transactions by at least three distinct taxing authorities in each county: the county itself, the applicable school district, and the applicable city. Each of these is a taxing authority delineated by geography; hence, by physical location. While sales taxes are not required on all Internet purchases at the present time, there is a very strong likelihood that this will become the norm within a few years. So, applying the correct rules for a transaction may require a determination of physical location. Perhaps a more pressing need, however, is the determination of physical location as a means to ward off threats.

At the 16^th USENIX Security Symposium in September, 2007, Saar Drimer and Steven Murdoch of the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory presented the specification of a “man-in-the-middle” type computer attack that they claim can succeed against certain financial transaction systems based on bank chip cards and point-of-sale terminals. Their paper was entitled Keep your enemies close: Distance bounding against smartcard relay attacks. This attack makes use of malevolent equipment to intercept the protocols involved in one transaction and to apply those to a second, fraudulent transaction at some associated location. The end result of the attack is that a person assumes they’re paying one amount for an item purchased in one store when in fact they end up providing payment for a different item at a different store. One means suggested for countering such an attack is to measure the delay time associated with various steps in the protocols in order to confirm that both ends of the transaction are within a known distance of each other. This approach is a very indirect approach to determination of both time and location. The direct establishment of both time and location as a trusted characteristic of the transaction would be a significant enhancement to the transcendent personal device.

Perhaps the most significant long term benefit to be gained from a capability on the part of the transcendent personal device to determine its physical location is the support it will then provide in the use of deictic discourse in the communication of policy. Such discourse is a very natural aspect of languages used by humans in their interactions with each other. The term refers to the ability on the part of distinct parties within a given interaction to determine relationships and hence to use language constructs that are based on these relationships. Consider the request that could be used to initiate a transaction between two people; “Please sell me this book and send it here.” This statement uses a number of words, called deictic words, which can only be correctly interpreted through contextual relationships implicit in the statement, but necessary to the ensuing transaction. The word “please” infers a second party in the transaction, a bookseller of some type

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