This article might take a while to read and digest.
But it is a great condensed and easy to understand attempt to explain the next big leap in human evolution.
These aren't concepts that are new at all, but the author seems to believe that just because Elon Musk wants this brain machine interface thing to become a common every day thing, that it's actually going to happen. It will happen and maybe Neuralink will be a match that motivates the industry to get up and go, but there really isn't a major BMI industry to real disrupt and motivate. Unlink personal banking (PayPal), Rockets (SpaceX), and cars and general transportation (Tesla and Hyperloop etc).. BMI doesn't really exist yet. We don't already have an equivalent business model for these things much less a general public interest.
Sure many people would benefit from interfacing directly with machines.. we aren't ready for it. The majority of people over a certain age probably can't even conceive of a world where we think directly to computers and things happen. Yes our lives are filled with very near interactions with machines, direct contact in the case of computers and phones and such like but that's totally different from internalizing that interface.
The fun part is, again, that this isn't a new concept and so sci-fi has had decades and longer to think up ways that human lives would be richer and potentially scarier should they be developed. That high bandwidth wireless interface.
Most likely it will be additive. We'll find ways to put something in our brains that we'll learn to control mentally which will allow us to communicate digitally. I mean that's the easy part. The engineering aspect of putting a radio into our heads and letting our minds learn to think out loud.
If you take Ghost in the Shell and a few oddball examples like Lucy (I hate that movie) they can see radio waves and all that. More importantly they can control them. Imagine a world where your mind is able to think digitally, and is augmented with a computer (like what we have now as a phone but with no screen because you wouldn't need one) or a cloud service, so that you could make phone calls with a thought. The computers are really good with dealing with the networking of making the call and brokering time with services that exist outside of your head.
Now think of a world with wireless 5G service where arguably cell towers could at the human level. We could be nodes on the mobile network.
Lala land thinking? Not if Neuralink takes off withing the next few years. There really are shit loads of things to get done first, but the network is about to start rolling out.
Outside of the mentioned (in the article) first cases for BMI to become common, which is to fix problems with the brain and human body. Replacing senses, augmenting senses.. and allowing us to function again, there will come super powers.
The idea of having a digital remote control in your brain that you can use to talk to machines, and other people instantly will transform the world.
But the author does go to great lengths to mention how things have changed drastically in our own lifetimes.
Going from hunter gatherers with sticks and stones and basic language.. we've still, individually, been at the mercy of our bodies biological needs. Thankfully for that we spend just enough time dealing with biological imperatives and the associated time socializing.. but increasingly we're spending more time in virtual lala land.
While the author does try to give you as much information about the pros and cons.. the biggest con is easily apparent to people that spend the most time in virtual lala land.
How do you step back from neurotic adventures in virtual lala land when everyone else will be there?
After the world started getting really smaller, allowing you to send mail to people around the world, first weeks between correspondence, to seconds, what's the real difference between the people you know IRL to the ones in VLL.
For a very long time now I've had a really hard time caring about people. There are a few that I try to keep in steady contact with, but for the most part.. I don't bother with people anymore.
It was like.. it's a bit of a hassle to have a social life in real life because doing so requires more effort than just taking care of myself. I have to be mindful of all of these things far beyond myself to stay in touch with hundreds of people I could keep in contact with in real life.
Then I started trying to keep in touch with people online and I'd send them things in the mail. That was really incredibly impractical so it never took off.
Jump ahead a decade or two with the internet and now there's basically the entire world.
I had the same crash where I was just like fuck this shit. It is really too hard to deal with all these online people through all these apps, and services and games.. and who the fuck are they all anyway.
I'd imagine (and have for many years) that in a few decades it would be the same thing all over again after BMIs became commonplace.
During that time the actual technology required to make that world a reality have been developed.
The article does mention two theoretical milestones. The few hundred to a few thousand bits of information, to the 1 million or more bits of information bandwidth that would bridge the brain with the outside world.
The important part about that is that it would skip the sensory and motor systems we've always had between our minds and the outside world.
But what about language?
You've probably heard that twins will develop their own shorthand languages and can at times seem to communicate telepathically.
Unless you were born a twin or have otherwise experienced practical telepathy with another human being, then you've had to settle with verbal conversations, email, etc to get by.
But what happens when there's direct communication between your mind, and n number of other people.
On the 1 to 1 side of things.. what do you normally speak to other people about? How your day went. What types of things you can do together and thus planning for doing things later. Or just randomly thinking at each other.
There isn't much of a risk of homogenizing your thoughts because you're still yourself.
But the longer you're associated with someone the more you get into that twinning mode where there are inside jokes and things only you both would know. Things that have meaning to only you both.
Trying to get that to happen in larger groups gets harder because of the nature of communication.
Thankfully computers and the internet haven't done much to exacerbate that issue because we're still communicating with language. We still think based on language.
The gray area about what comes next is mentioned in the article but it isn't clearly spelled out.
Your mind communicates with itself instantly. The ego and the id and other parts of the conscious mind might in some cases use whatever language you're most comfortable with.. but that's possibly the thing that's holding us back.
Imagine a world where there's little need for complex language for the day to day things because they aren't necessary anymore. You just thinking impulses at other people. While on the other hand what is language when you can think at the speed of thought with other people?
One thought from sci-fi is that we'd live in our minds in a vastly sped up lala land. There's no need to work on our own or in groups at the speed of regular language.
I saw this Ted Talk recently and it appears to be very relevant. With only basic training using a simple program you can think 5 times faster. Imagine if you have to get used to thinking that fast all the time. Not because you're playing a video game or anything but because that's just what the expected speed of thought and communication will be.
That's the moment when DPU starts to make sense. Death wouldn't be because things are different and strange, but because the mind can't wrap itself around what the world will be once these things become commonplace and people get used to them.
Most of the basic bullshit of pleasant shit gets replaced with more computer like impulses. What happens when, if hopefully, spoken language becomes archaic.
Most conversations that you could have with another person would be replaced with impulses and thoughts, image pulses that you could share at incredible speed.
The idea that you could share concepts and that they could be backed up.
The first people, or probably a generation of them so that we can learn this new common thought language (since we may in fact not think alike) that has been innate for ourselves but utterly foreign to others might represent a really long period for them to get used to thinking to each other.
How do you teach people how to think? What if some people (the ones we call smart) are able to think much faster. How do you normalize that without falling into the trap of the pace of spoken language all over again?
It annoys me a little because I started writing a novel many years ago with many concepts that have already become every day common things. Even snapchat and drones and flying cars etc. The one remaining thing is that brain thing that lets you think impulses and pictures and entire thoughts to other people.. it still hasn't happened yet.
BMI for controlling a vehicle for example, where you're hooked directly into the ECU and all controls and all the entertainment things with access to the internet.. driving would be a joke. But doesn't that clash with self driving?
What happens when you have enough bandwidth to control a vehicle like it's an extension of your own body? Sure you don't have to have that much control, but some people might require it. Race drivers and other professionals etc.
It will happen soon. The mechanics of it are being developed.. but not many people are thinking about how it will actually work and how it will actually affect our lives. The part about how hard it is for some folks to get off and stay off of social media to take care of themselves long enough to stay healthy. You're asking those people what will happen when they can dive into each others heads.
Now.. that's one part of the issue. The second is how devastating it will be to the global economy if you could internalize your computer screen. And give control of it over to your mind. Imagine if you will an internal gaming computer that allows you to live inside a virtual world similar to all that VR bullshit hollywood has been pumping out for decades. But real.
Currently your mind is a really powerful tool for making stuff up instantly. Give it the power of a gaming computer though and allow it to offload some of that creativity and then open that up to the internet so other people can share in that experience and well, next step in human evolution.
If your thoughts weren't too fleeting, if your memories weren't so nebulous, if they were totally non volatile and written to memory that could be read off and store and archived... we would you ever want to leave your own head?
I mentioned homogenization earlier because there's also a real risk that you'd easily lose a sense of identity if you didn't have a physical self to be mindful of.
Imagine a world where the best thinkers had their every need taken care of and so they could remain in their own heads 24/7. Their minds augmented and accelerated by internal machines. Accessing the cloud and able to talk to anyone at any time. What if you couldn't retain a sense of self because you had no self in a way that mattered anymore?
Several people with one mind. One mind with several bodies. If thought is the water and the mind is the vessel, linking minds and mixing the waters of our thoughts.. the self would dissolve.