Software helping to run your mind. Near perfect memory. Always online, plugged in.
Get your phones out of your hands, install it in your brain.
This will happen by the end of the century.
The people who most want to install computers in people's brains, are the last people on Earth who should be trusted with other people's brains.
shareWhen people see the benefits, they'll want it done. Imagine having the knowledge bank of every encyclopedia in your head? Humans will become so smart it will be considered the evolution of the species.
shareNot worth it.
Hopefully I'll be retired by the time corporate brain implants become feasible, and I'll have no earthy reason to even consider one.
> Software helping to run your mind. Near perfect memory. Always online, plugged in.
With the databases contained therein (factual memories, etc) and the software (belief systems, moral axioms, reasoning processes, etc) always open to being updated by the vendor(s) and/or the government.
Donald Trump seems to be permanently banned from Twitter. Whether one agrees with that or not, imagine what could be done in the scenario you're postulating. The powers that be could quite literally block you and everyone else from perceiving him at all, or any other person who fell into their disfavor. If any such un-person appeared on television, you simply wouldn't process anything that person said or did; indeed, you'd never know he or she had appeared at all. The same blocking could and would be applied to any banned book or work of art. Go to the library and look right at it on the shelf, and you simply wouldn't see it.
History would cease to exist. With the capability to reprogram the entire population to forget a real event happened, or to believe that a false, non-existent event happened, they would surely do so. If the past is inconvenient to the prevailing ideology, just rewrite it.
And do you have any controversial beliefs? Things on which you think society has gone astray? Not any more. Your mind would be programmed to have only correct thoughts, and you would express the proper sentiments at all times!
Privacy would be dead. You're always online, always plugged in. Someone, somewhere, would be recording everything you see and hear, and every thought that goes through your head.
If this ever happened while I was alive, I'd drop out of society, find a cave, and move in.
"With the capability to reprogram the entire population to forget a real event happened, or to believe that a false, non-existent event happened, they would surely do so."
Our brains sometimes do this naturally. It's called the "Mandela Effect." The programmers could tap into the section of the brain that causes this.
"Privacy would be dead. You're always online, always plugged in."
Privacy has already been compromised. This would make it a hundred times worse. We would become the Borg from Star Trek.
I'm a research psychologist by academic training, but haven't been active in the field for a long time. Memory is a very complex thing. Try this little experiment. Recall the last time you entered your home. You parked your car, got out, walked to your door, unlocked it, and entered. Or maybe you were riding a bike and carried it inside. Whatever happened, take a moment and remember it.
Now, a lot of people think that remembering something is simply replaying whatever one saw, heard, et cetera during an experience, like replaying an audio/video recording on a mental "television screen." But if you're like most people, what you "saw" in that recollection a moment ago was a video angle of yourself from a few feet away, as if the video was recorded by someone walking along with you -- a perspective you could not possibly have personally experienced. And a lot of memory is like that -- not recalling what actually happened, but reconstructing what must have happened.
The OP's scenario has its wilder side too. Think about collaborative projects like SETI@home, where individuals donate spare CPU and GPU cycles from their PCs to huge computing problems. In this world, people could donate spare brain cycles for such things. It would create some weird dreams, I'm sure.
I've been trying to imagine how the "cancelled" would exist in such a culture. If the normal people can't perceive you, you'd have no problems maintaining your existence. When you're hungry, just walk into a grocery and take what you need. For sleep, just walk into any business before closing time and find a place to crash. When you need new clothes, take them. But they would not have the protections of laws, courts, and the police. They would have to have some mental blocks installed to prevent them from harming normal people, but apart from that, they would exist in an utterly lawless subculture, invisible to the normal population. Sounds like a good science fiction story there somewhere.
I agree absolutely about privacy. Cell phones aren't mandatory, but getting along without one is quite inconvenient. So, people are all but required to carry devices with which the government can track them 24/7. Not only that, the government can use them as microphones and listen in on whatever is going on around a person, without that person's knowledge and without a warrant. Scary, really. I routinely use a Faraday pouch with my cell phone, not so much out of paranoia but in protest.
I looked up Faraday bags and didn't realize they were so widely available. I thought this was something a person with a knowledge of physics had to build themselves.
It's a great idea. Thanks for the suggestion.
Here's the one I use: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A7MACL2/
It seems to work well enough. When I have my cell phone inside it and try to call it from my landline, I don't even get a ring but am immediately directed to voicemail. And when I take the phone out of the bag it shows "no service available" for a few seconds before it reconnects.
I've also got two of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076KZF645/
I got those for a different reason. Sometimes when I'd twist or bend over, another object in my pocket would bump against my car keys' remote control buttons, and I'd unknowingly send the signal to unlock the car door or turn on the panic alarm. So now I keep my keys inside those. They're big enough to hold the keys but small enough to fit in the front pockets of my blue jeans.
Yes, very nice product here and I can’t believe their not more commonly used.
shareThe one I linked to, from Amazon, is really convenient to use. Just put the phone in the bag, fold the flap over twice, and seal it with Velcro. But you can make your own Faraday bag.
1) Wrap your cell phone up completely in a couple of thicknesses of paper towels, so the aluminum foil in step 2 doesn't touch the phone and start up some app. (Probably not necessary if you have a flip phone but doesn't hurt.)
2) Wrap that up completely in aluminum foil. One layer won't do it, you'll need at least three or four layers.
Now, try calling your cell phone and see what happens. If the call goes immediately to voice mail, as if the cell phone is turned off or off the network, you've got enough foil. If it rings, or hangs silent for a while before going to voice mail, the signal isn't totally blocked and you need to add more. It doesn't take much foil to do it though. Problem is, it's messy and anyone seeing it might think you also have a tin foil hat you wear.
Ah, transhumanism. It's an interesting concept but not without its concerns, as expressed by the responses in this thread.
shareWe're entering an ethical mine field here ;)
As a kind of a prosthesis, making blind people see, deaf people hear, tinnitus removal, letting one move an automated aid, it's hard to argue against some neural interfaces or the technology as a whole. There are conditions, where a sort of a neural pace keeper could drastically improve some affected people's quality of life (I've seen an impressive documentation about it, doesn't make me an expert on the matter).
They will exist, some experimental forms already do. They will improve and in some aspects, probably surpass the functionality of their biological original.
What's next? There are already existing trends like "BioHacking", healthy people taking drugs for some benefit (improved night vision for example). There's a very thin line to drug abuse and doping for existing medications. Will neural interfaces land in a similar territory?
Once people see the benefits, the enhancement race will be on.
sharei dunno man, I rather not, got enough problems with privacy,
it's a logical move forward but if even I did have a chance I wouldn't