The ability to access the Internet with one's brain may not be as far off as we believe.
Imagine the ability to have your own internal GPS in your head, the ability to communicate with anyone in any language via instant language conversion, and the ability to search the Internet just by thinking about it.
Multiple technologies have converged in recent years, creating a range of new opportunities. What was once science fiction is now moving from the lab into medical application.
One technology in testing with the Food and Drug Administration is Cyberkinetics's BrainGate System that helps severely motor-impaired persons access computers using only their brains. The system consists of a sensor that is implanted on the motor cortex of the brain, allowing users to control a computer with just their thoughts.
Other brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been in testing for years, primarily focused on improving an individual’s sense of sight or hearing. The Audeo, for example, is a technology being tested that allows individuals who cannot speak to communicate via a computer just by thinking about what they want to say.
In a recent private conference conducted by my company, Toffler Associates, scientists from institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) indicated beliefs that the next decade will be the “neural decade," in which research based on neural science and applications will become more accepted. These scientists are already working on ways for the brain and body to integrate technologies to improve human functioning.
We can expect a jump from medical research implants to implants for common human performance enhancement. We have seen a similar pattern with other aspects of medical advances: The use of drugs such as steroids to treat medical disorders is now used more commonly by athletes to enhance performance. Surgery originally used to address severe eyesight problems now has become common Lasik surgery.
Human performance enhancement will eventually give way to more common applications, such as implants that allow the brain to connect to the future Internet.
It is hard to predict when such capabilities will be commonplace, but even 10 to 20 years out is not that long. Twenty years ago, in 1988, the Internet basically didn’t exist, and something called a “mobile phone” was a 2-pound object just being considered for use by the general public.
Though Internet access via the brain is fascinating, there are also a range of questions we will need to begin to address:
What will education and learning mean if we can have the future Internet instantly available by just thinking about it?
How will we define “critical infrastructure” in the future if one of the most important infrastructures is the connection of the human brain to Internet?
How might adversaries use or affect these brain Internet interfaces to do harm?
We indeed live in interesting times!
— Aaron Schulman is a partner in Toffler Associates, overseeing the firm's consulting with the national security and government sector
"Lawnmower Man", one of my favorite all time movies and the culprit of me wanting to sit on my buttocks in college and just wait for the 'lazy' yet fun way of learning "EVERYTHING" predicted this outcome..16 years ago..and I'm still waiting!
I think a major transitional 'phase' prior to this brain connecting to the internet (gotta give the dry cleaners some time to iron out the heavy wrinkles of consumer advocacy..heavier than washed & dried in high heat linen) is the onset of augmented reality as well as other related blogs and comments by Alan Reiter.
According to "Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil, one of my favorite books may have coined the word 'singularity' and is mentioned almost as much or more than the worst web2.0 buzzwords here at IE, seems to point in that direction also. I do believe that Mostly Original Substrate Humans, did 'harness' the implants, however did not embrace 'Singularity' in the book.
I wonder how much endocrinology will play in part with the implants, either way, I really look forward to it.
The title of my post, not article, was a quick response on that matter. I can share much more upon this subject since my major in Philosophy emphasizes on Philosophy of Mind (Epiphenomenalism), Phenomenology, Epistemology and Metaphysics. Though I was, in a way, avoiding to get too deep in this subject since it's not really related to the Internet I don't seem to have an option now.
Excuse however my informal response.
You seem to have missed the meaning of nature of thinking. Nature as in the essence of thinking. A mere statistic on the following sentence that shows the neural activity of the brain is a complete different matter and won't have any coherence if you relate it to the previous sentence. So yes, you were right about that, accidentally though.
Cognitive science is mostly empirical and inductive. That's a whole new chapter I won't bother to touch unless it's required.
Once again, excuse my temporal response. I'll try to keep this from being an opinion trashpit with my following post. Which reminds me, those "opinions" were really paraphrasing Plato's ones. I hope you don't think his opinions are trash also.
Until then...ponder upon Socrates words: "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that i know nothing." (Hint: These are merely words of humility.)
What about someone using her bluetooth headset to control her distant software while walking? That's so 2007... the Internet world is starting to spin too fast for us ;-)
"neuroscience to understand the brain as a machine and not paying any attention to the mind"
that's why there is neuroscience and cognitive science. Neuroscience is supposed to focus entirely on the physical aspect.
"The nature of thinking is still not understood. We use 7-8% of our brains"
This to make lacks coherence, how can you in the first part of the sentence say that we do not understand a topic then put an affirmation about it in the next sentence?
Anyway please post reference to papers when you mention "facts" as in using just a part of our brain. If this is a personal hypothesis please mention it as such.
The idea is interesting but what about ongoing project currently going in that directio?
I think you could have a look at Neuroinformatics 2008, 1st INCF Congress of Neuroinformatics: Databasing and Modeling the Brain Stockholm, September 7 - 9, 2008
companies like Emotiv and NeuroSky.
glimpse at the state of the art of web Browser with ongoing project like Mozilla Firefox with plugins like Vimperator, iMacro, the Ubiquity and Aurora projects and also the Chrome browser from Firefox.
Cheers.
PS : I honestly think your article was very shalow and need much more serious research if you don't want to transform this website to an opinion trashpit. I apologize if this sound harsh but I expect higher quality content.
The illusionary attempts of neuroscience to understand the brain as a machine and not paying any attention to the mind, two notions significantly different, result into such aspirations. Internet controlled by my brain...(This doesn't sound that far from today's happenings by the way. Skipping the whole injecting a chip in your brain etc...it's still similar to my iPhone pretty much, only far more controlling.)
The nature of thinking is still not understood. We use 7-8% of our brains. Instead of exploring that 93% that I'm sure hides far greater information for our existence...we want an Explorer in our brain. As if the human mind is not an explorer of it own; unfortunately, many times driven to false explorations like this one.
Though it sounds tempting, (languages, information etc) like most crucial mistakes, it really advocates for amathy and dependance. It would be the literal application of the term "brainwashing".
"There's no truth out there...google it with your thought...you'll see."
and we thought people talking to themselves in cars while driving was funny. I can see walking past someone that is just laughing hilariously for no apparent reason in 2028 a little disturbing.(and to think I do that now w/o my brain connected to a bigger brain). Hail to Singularity!!
I'm willing to be a test subject for that now..just let me go on jeopardy!!
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