I’ve always been interested in the terminology that doesn’t change, even when the technology does. For instance, my girl, she’s over there, sitting on the couch, oblivious to the world around her because she’s jacked in.

‘Jacked in’ used to be the term people used when they plugged their cranial implants into the network. People had jacks in the side of their head and just plugged in. The plug-in would charge the battery at the same time as giving them access.

For the most part, you’d look like a junky when you were jacked in. Your eyes would roll back into your head, and for those that were prone to additional loss of body control, they might drool down their chin, or worse.

That lasted a decade or more until the computer manufacturers figured out two things. The first involved shrinking the computer so that it could run off the electrical energy of your body while still providing the functionality people had come to expect. The second was the invention of a shield that was small enough to put in your head, but was still capable of keeping the radio antennae from frying your brain.

Even after these upgrades to the basic personal computer, people still called connecting to the net ‘being jacked in.’