Jim, thanks for the post.

There is another technology to think about (from MegaTraveller):
- Holographic controls (TL 13):"Dynamically configurable contoured 3D
controls with tactile feedback." Ref's Manual p.60

You don't need a haptic suit anymore if you can turn your room into an
interface.

Looking more closely:
 > Haptic hoists are introduced at TL 12.
 > These lift the user entirely off the ground so that they can
 > experience the sensation of swimming, scuba diving, or even
 > floating in zero-gee.

= Grav belt plus the suit, right?

 > Users undergo a medical procedure in which microscopic SITs (Signal
 > Interceptor/Transmitters) are nanosurgically spliced into their nerve
 > fibers. These, in turn, connect to a small wireless router, often
 > placed alongside the brainstem, which allows them to receive sensory
 > data and send nerve impulses to a computer.

The required bandwidth worries me. You're going to be transmitting at
terahertz or infrared frequencies which makes a router next to the
brainstem problematic. Safer to move the router outside the skull.

Similarly, hardwired connections for the SITs are needed rather than
some form of electromagnetic broadcasting through brain tissue, blood
and spinal fluid.

 > At TL 18, users can experiment with what it’s like to have an
 > entirely different personality.

="Partial memory transfer".

 > By TL 20, neuroscientists understand cognition and memory so well
 > that they can now merge two memory sets into one.

T5 talks about "Reality Manipulation" which looks like the ability to do
"Groundhog Day" or "All You Need is Kill/Edge of Tomorrow" until you
learn how to solve a situation. Presumably this includes temporal
manipulation so you "get it right the first time".

Good exploration of the wider social issues...

 >  Also, by delegating the task of answering requests to a virtual
 > agent, it’s possible to lose control of one’s downtime.

Pseudo-reality communications at TL 15+ could make it difficult to
distinguish between the user and their agent(s).

 > For some, even the business of getting up, eating, and shitting
 > become unwelcome chores. Some of these people so far as to have their
 > bodies hooked up to feeding and waste elimination tubes as though
 > they were in a coma so that they can literally spend their entire
 > lives in virtuality.

This is overlapping with TLs where you could become a brain in a box,
which might actually be less maintenance risk for the virtuality addict.

 > Psychohistorical Research and the Rights of WAPs:
See "Surface Detail" by Iain Banks for an example of conflict driven by
differing views on WAP rights.

Ken Barns wrote:
 > Of course, my thoughts on Traveller-tech medicine involve a heck of a
 > lot of expert diagnostic systems, fast-drug use* and cold sleep.

Agree with decision support and cold sleep but not fast drug.
Why slow down someone's deterioration when you can stop it with cold sleep?

If slow drug can speed up the initial reparative responses without
scarring, it might be useful to get people to rehab sooner.

Rob O'Connor