justifying any GitS-eque monologuing or making shit up about the setting Pav does in an argument by buying max rating skill chips for literature and history for him
external memory is literally how Motoko does it, CP2020 just makes you plug that memory into your head since they didn't predict wi-fi
2020 turned into such an interesting retro-future, it's full of things you would've loved to have in the 1980s like walkman sized cellular fax machines, 500Mbps ISDN connections, induction data and charging connections, stuff like that.
But it misses out on two developments, wireless networks being as big as thing as they turned out to be, and miniaturisation meaning devices stop being single purpose since you can shove so many kinds of sensors into one device and have it be massively multifunctional (aka smartphones).
It's this kind of thing, 90% of this stuff is a smartphone now, but 2020 didn't see that coming and went some weird directions and saw things like wearable computers and public terminals as the more convenient way to have access to all that kind of stuff.
But it did agree that carrying all that stuff around with you is kinda dorky and inconvenient, a lot of the setting's cyberware is about replacing gadgets and never being caught without your camera/gun/cyberdeck/gossip mags