The Girl Who Was Plugged In

What Tiptree imagined and called “the carrier field” is uncannily close to the internet of today. It’s a global digital network that allows the instant transfer of information and performance of tasks. It’s a potent image of the power of technology, and a hidden system that both empowers and controls people, again somewhat like the internet.

We first hear about the “carrier field” when Delphi is licensed to start her life. She’s assigned another name, “a long string of binaries” (53) which enables her to access, use, and purchase things. It’s projected to a satellite and returns as energy into the carrier field, which has every name and every piece of information. Here, the narrator emphasizes the scale of the field; the way it instantaneously encompasses and connects the globe. It’s what beams holovision shows into people’s houses, controls automated vehicles, sets access rights for all kinds of activities, and enables P. Burke’s brain waves to be projected into Delphi’s body and back in an instant. P. Burke and Delphi literally exist and die via this field—it’s the digital puppet strings that hold them together.

The carrier field effectively dispenses with distance. Even a mind and body can be connected in an instant, though they’re thousands of miles apart.