SimStim is a technology that broadcasts or records someone's sensoriums, experiences and sensory input. Persons are fit with a broadcast rig, and their senses are broadcast live, so that other persons elsewhere can experience them; or they are recorded onto cassettes as memories, which then can be replayed on a simstim deck and be re-experienced.
The decks perhaps resemble portable audio players and the small ones can be worn on a belt. A deck has a grey plastic contact band/tiara that is worn across the user's forehead. The dermatrodes are basically the same technology as those of a cyberspace simulator.
The Finn patched an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace VII with a flip flop switch that would allow Case to access Simstim while still jacked in the matrix, specifically in order to see what Molly Millions sees.
Two years after the Maas Biotech extraction, Angie Mitchell began a career with Sense/Net as a SimStar star.
Industry[]
There are simstim "actors" who record adventurous or luxurious sensoriums around the world for others to purchase and re-experience in their place. Commercial records are edited so that users don't feel things like headaches. Tally Isham is such a famous professional. There are glossy Japanese magazines dedicated to simstim stars. It seems that they all followed the same beauty standards, as Automatic Jack noticed that they have almost identical faces and eyes (preferring blue Zeiss Ikons). Enthusiasts (like Tiger) try to alter their appearance in surgical boutiques to confirm each season's standards.
Hackers don't like Simstim fad, being a meat toy. Automatic Jack has somehow sarcastic thoughts when seeing Rikki's fascination with Simstim and Isham. Case considers it "a gratuitous multiplication of flesh input".
See also[]
A similar technology is mentioned in Fragments of a Hologram Rose but there it is called ASP.