I recently read that we`ll be able to download our memories to the Internet someday.
British futurologist Ian Pearson speculates that the very rich may be able to download their brains to computers 50 years from now. Apparently, once technology is able to interface with our neural pathways and turn signals and impulses into digital code, our emotions and memories will all become storable and sharable. This technology will also make it possible to create computers with consciousness.
On the one hand, the potential for abuse of this technology is terrifying. In theory, a person could be vulnerable to hacking and control by anyone with the know-how.
Or you could download your brain, expecting to live forever that way, and find your consciousness trapped in a purgatory of computer innards until someone takes pity on you and deletes you.
What`s more - conscious, 'living` computers would become a reality - and what if they took a dislike to people?
On the other hand, I can see some potentially fabulous uses for such technology. Imagine downloading and sharing the insights and skills of the world`s cleverest people? It could be possible to re-use and reinvent the best inspirations of geniuses who didn`t have time or the right tools to develop their every idea to completion.
You could search the minds of the world`s people to find all the 'puzzle pieces` of information that add up to 'the Big Picture`.
And - best of all, in my opinion - it might become possible to store the contents of your brain in an orderly and searchable fashion, and so never again misplace the car keys or forget people`s names.
It might become possible to store the contents of your brain in an orderly and searchable fashion, and so never again misplace the car keys or forget people`s names.
Tracy Burrows, News Editor, ITWeb
As someone who could be described as 'memory challenged`, I think it would be wonderful to regularly backup your brain`s contents to a hard drive and tap into that information again whenever you need it.
Google could come up with personal brain search engines capable of adapting to one`s own unique, possibly convoluted, style of filing information in the brain banks, so as to retrieve information in nanoseconds.
You could just 'think` the query (who on earth is that?), your wireless connection to a global hotspot would allow you to instantly access your personal mental database on the WWW, and an answer would flash back to your brain in time for you to say: "Why, George Smith, how nice to see you again!", without your missing a beat.
Never again would you pose the desperate question: "Now, where on earth did I put my car keys?", only to be met by blank stares from everyone around you. You`d get an instant answer. Maybe even a visual mapping inside your head, with a great virtual arrow flashing above the map to show exactly where you last put the keys.
I say, roll on progress. It`s time we got our minds sorted out.
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