It seems likely that humanity will eventually supplement our thinking with computers. If not in a hundred years, then in 500, or 1000 years (assuming we survive that long). First in terms of accessing information. In some ways we have already done this. With google we can find anything. But eventually vast stores of information will be, not at fingertips length, but just a thought away. Entire encyclopedias available in our heads. Next we will probably make improvements to process information faster. One might have to do so, in order to stay competitive. It will likely seem natural when it comes.

For reasons commonly discussed, any civilization that we contact is likely to be millions of years ahead of us technically. I wonder if one barrier to communication might be differences in communication speed. In one second they might absorb and process more thoughts, ideas, and concepts than a human does in a lifetime.

Just something interesting to think about.

Finding that they are out there is the first step I guess.

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> It seems likely that humanity will eventually supplement our thinking with
> computers. If not in a hundred years, then in 500, or 1000 years (assuming we
> survive that long). First in terms of accessing information. In some ways we
> have already done this. With google we can find anything. But eventually
> vast stores of information will be, not at fingertips length, but just a
> thought away. Entire encyclopedias available in our heads. Next we will
> probably make improvements to process information faster. One might have to
> do so, in order to stay competitive. It will likely seem natural when it
> comes.
>
> For reasons commonly discussed, any civilization that we contact is likely to
> be millions of years ahead of us technically. I wonder if one barrier to
> communication might be differences in communication speed. In one second they
> might absorb and process more thoughts, ideas, and concepts than a human does
> in a lifetime.
>
> Just something interesting to think about.
>
> Finding that they are out there is the first step I guess.

I wonder if this should have been posted in the Religious Thread?

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> It seems likely that humanity will eventually supplement our thinking with
> computers. If not in a hundred years, then in 500, or 1000 years (assuming we
> survive that long). First in terms of accessing information. In some ways we
> have already done this. With google we can find anything. But eventually
> vast stores of information will be, not at fingertips length, but just a
> thought away. Entire encyclopedias available in our heads. Next we will
> probably make improvements to process information faster. One might have to
> do so, in order to stay competitive. It will likely seem natural when it
> comes.

Did someone recently watch "Ghost in the Shell"? If not, it kinda delves into that (at least the series does). It's worth a look anyway.

Personally, I'd like to think we could either evolve or (by technological means) activate the 90% (or so) of the brain that isn't used. However, time will tell, and we'll burn that bridge once we get there (IMO 100 years may actually be rather generous).

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Still looking for something profound or inspirational to place here.

> I wonder if this should have been posted in the Religious Thread?

Too speculative?

That reminds me of one of my favorite commercials, by G.E. I think: Set in black and white at first, in the early days of electricity. Some guys have early light bulbs strung up on some polls around a field. They are trying to play american football at night. The lights are not very good and people keep missing passes, and getting hit with the ball that they cannot see. Finally they get frustrated and quit-- "Yeah 'night football'", the say, as they walk off the field, "that'll be the day!" Then the commercial fasts forwards to an overhead view of some 1990's nighttime football game, in vivid color, lit up with 100,000 wats of lightbulbs, so bright it can be seen from space.

I think my 4cm by 2cm MP3 music player which holds GB's of data, and fits in my pocket it the beginnings of the kind of augementation mentioned above. Just the very beginning. We still need better ways to interact with computers, but already there has been research showing that humans can control computers with brain waves. People who have no control of their arms are using their mind to move cursors on screens--today.

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I think the revolution is closer than we know. There was a documentary about a chip that embeds into a spot on the cerebral cortex and has many tiny microhooks that probe down into the area and can monitor the electrical signals in a small area with great precision. They had a monkey with this chip embedded into it's motor control area. The monkey played a video game that gave it rewards, and meanwhile a computer, monitoring the game and with algorithms that can "train" itself to patterns in the neuron firings, was controlling a robotic arm in another room. The arm eventually was trained to mimic the exact movements of the monkey's real arm. Moreover, with training the arm would still move when the monkey was prompted to "imagine" playing the game without actually playing it.

On the flip side, I read a short article about breakthroughs in stimulating neurons with semiconductor chips. The difficulty has always been to stimulate the nerve without destroying it. They are much better at controlling the stimulus nowadays. We've probably all seen the experiments that have been conducted in South America to stimulate the visual cortex to give blind people a measure of crude electronic "sight". (As an electronics guy, I wish I could redesign their through-skin interface, which looks like a big gnarly cannon plug. I would have designed a much more elegant single serial or fiberoptic cable solution).

> Personally, I'd like to think we could either evolve or (by technological
> means) activate the 90% (or so) of the brain that isn't used. However, time

That whole 90% of the brain isn't used is an often quoted statistic that was made before the existence of MRI machines. One of my college professors a few years ago had her PhD in neurology, and was a researcher at Harvard for many years. She said to me that just the opposite is true: 90% of the brain IS used. Information and processing in the brain is not a one-for-one bit correspondence like it is in a computer. It is a far more complicated process involving strength and frequency of neuron firings, feedback-reinforced firing, and interconnection builds between neurons. Some researchers even suggest that in certain structures quantum effects may play a role, though she did not subscribe to that hypothesis. Especially where memory is concerned, you can sorta think of the brain as a variable compression file, like an MPEG: the more you have to cram into the file the less precise any given frame actually is.

Another fascinating thing she saw on MRIs is that there are many people among us whose brains are actually very much smaller than the size of their cranial space. Their brains are literally suspended in fluid. Yet cognitive tests show very little difference between these people and "normal" sized people in most cases. So when someone says "I have half a mind to..." they just might.

My mistake, I was working with what I had (almost never current on specialized fields). Kind of disapointing to think we are that close to our natural limits though.

Plus side is how many of the tools to do this we have developed to some extent. There is still a long way to go, maybe a quick check on the technology front is in order. What do we need to make ourselves cyborgs (in the SciFi sense)? Obviously right now I'm talking about what we can do, no consideration to cost or mass production.

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Still looking for something profound or inspirational to place here.

A quick search on related material:

A related article on the monkey brain monitoring: Monkey Brain Operates Machine

Synapse chip taps into brain chemistry

World's first brain prosthesis revealed

Blind man wired for sight

Human evolution expanded brains to increase expertise capacity not IQ: A resolution of the normal IQ but small brain anomaly.