Nano Future 2030

I was asked if I knew anyone working on brain augmentation. I don’t. We are too early in the development phase of true nanotechnology. You could say that all work and research going on now is part of the foundation of brain augmentation as well as life extension.

We are our brains. You can replace anything else in our body from some other body and we keep going. Replace your brain with a brain from someone else and you don’t even exist anymore.

I’m aware that some people with a different perspective would consider this crazy because they consider the mind and body to be one. They can’t consider the mind apart from the body. I agree that the two are so well integrated that it is hard to consider the mind apart from the body. Tell that to the poor souls trapped in a body they can’t feel or move in hospitals today. The mind goes on, no matter what the body, outside of the skull, is able to contribute.

So, if the brain is the essence of who we are, we only need to keep that brain working in good order to live forever. Of course, we like our bodies and the experience we get from our bodies and we don’t want to be a brain in a box. But don’t get confused about what is important. Once you have the technology to build and repair things at the molecular level, you can build any body you want or keep the one you have in good repair. But if the brain degrades or fails, you die.

So, the brain should be the focus of our efforts to improve our health and life experience. And along the way, we learn how to augment our brains very easily since it’s just another piece of hardware that needs an interface. If we try to understand the entire body and repair it first so as to support the aging brain, we waste time and people.

The sequence of events should run like this:

1) Fully understand the brain at the biological cell level of a pig and a human.
( That should take another 10 to 20 years).

2) Develop brain cell replacement cells made of inorganic materials such as silicon and ceramic, that exactly duplicate the functions of all types of cells in the brain of a pig and a human. (a good 10 years of research after you have a full function nanofactory available in many labs).

3) Test limited cell replacement in pigs and prove the replacement cells are equivalent to the original.

4) Test interface modules to the pig brain to bring in extra memory, audio and video input and internet connections.

5) (Finally we get to Human Brain Augmentation) Test limited cell replacements in human brains to form an interface for extra memory, audio and video input and internet connections. Once you have an interface you can add any function to the brain.

6) Test limited cell replacement in humans to repair brain injury. Prove the additions are equivalent to the original brain material.

7) Test full brain replacement in pigs and prove the repair and replacement of the modules can extend the life of the pig brain indefinitely.

8 ) Test full brain replacement in humans who are dying and willing to take the risk. Show, to the extent possible, that the person is the same as the original.

After this, anyone can have their organic brain replaced slowly over time ( six months) while retaining consciousness and full function and they will then gain potentially eternal life, full download/upload ability to backup their minds to local memory, ability to change bodies to alternative biological versions or to fully inorganic bodies that duplicate the function and appearance of biological bodies. In other words, replace your organic brain with an inorganic version and you gain tremendous value.

Do we retain the soul in such a replacement? I don’t know because I don’t know what a soul is. Provide me with a technical description of the soul and I’ll be happy to incorporate it into the mix.

Nanocells – a concept based on the idea of augmenting your cells instead of trying to fix your "body".

Your cells are your body. They are individuals in the sense that billions of one type make up an organ or muscle. If you know how to keep that one cell working optimally, then you probably have done a significant job of taking care of your "body".

At first glance, it may seem daunting, since we have more than 250 different types of cells in our bodies. But you don’t have to do everything at once.

We have the choice of picking out a few cell types to augment intensely or target all cells at a very basic level to support the entire body.

To pick a few cells for augmentation, we might try heart muscle, skin, liver, bladder, nervous system. The ones that most often go bad. Those organs contain many types of cells with many functions critical to the operation of the cell.

To augment the entire body at once, you have to stick to simple augmentation efforts in every cell of the body. This is simpler and might have greater effect on general health.

For instance, general cell augmentation would try to prevent internal cell actions like cancerous replication, DNA modification by virus, cell wall damage, or pollution from outside chemicals. It could monitor cell chemistry and signal a higher order communication system when ph or ion levels move outside of a safe range.

That higher communication system is part of a data accumulation network setup by groups of cells to consolidate their data and to present a compressed data stream of important facts to upper management. The top level management is the human composed of these cells. For example, the human could be notified when his physical activity stresses his body beyond its ability to handle or adapt to the stress. Sort of an early warning system that augments the pain pathways that we presently have for feedback.

How do we get these nano cells? At first it will be by injection or oral consumption of billions of robot modules designed to find an unoccupied cell of a certain type and to set up house keeping in that cell. And then to link up with other cells and become part of a larger communication system of cells.

Another route is to set up installation modules in the bone marrow and as new blood cells are specialized, they also are injected with a nanocell module to setup housekeeping. When the cell dies naturally ( assuming you allow that to happen for any reason ) the module is recycled and put into a new cell.

The goal is to have a nanocell module inside every cell in your body. It is not clear if you could stop all cell death or would want to do so. Skin cells flake off and die in millions per day, but that is natural and without redesigning our skin, I don’t see how to prevent those cells from dying. In that sense, dying is natural.

But having heart muscle die, seems unnecessary. Certainly, cancer is unnecessary. Preventing cancer and heart attacks would be among the first benefits of a nanocell system.

In my last post a cell oriented approach was offered.  To explore that a bit more, lets look at what is needed.  I want to call these things Nanocells.  It is a human cell with augmentation.

At first we need a mechanism to penetrate a random cell and set up housekeeping.  The goal is to coexist with the normal cell machinery and live off the intercellular chemical energy.  Then to learn about the cell and monitor anything that we can fix or adjust.  Eventually we, or the nanocell equipment, knows as much as it needs to know to keep the cell happy and repaired. 

How big would it be?  5% of the volume of a cell? Something small because we don’t want to expand the size of an organ and therefore the flesh of the organism.  For example, if my math is right,  Dr. Drexler estimates a 400 nm cube would provide a 1 Ghz computer and, from the Internet, I see that  blood cells have a mean volume of 82 micons cubed.  Or

volume of cube =   (400 nm) ^3   = 0.064 cubic microns
volume of cell   =    82 cubic microns.

Or about 0.078 percent of the cell volume.   Throw in ten times more equipment and you are still far below 1 percent of the cell.   And if you want to have a bigger computer, just network the cells and create a LAN of immense proportions.  A volume containing 1000 cells could rival a super computer.  I see hierarchies of cells where one level talks to a the next level up for instructions and higher level decisions.  Your entire body eventually reports to You by way of the intelligent immune system which serves as the interface between your consciousness and the flesh of your body. 

What kind of equipment do we add to the nanocell machinery?  

• Power supply.
• Communicator module for talking to other cells.
• Sensors of intercellular fluids
• Chemical synthesizers.
• Mechanical structure (cell shape) manipulators.
• Nucleus probe with sensors and mechanical effectors.
• Cell wall cleaner and repair unit.
• Virus detector and eliminator.

The power supply runs off ATP molecules naturally present in the cell.  The same energy that runs the biological cell must run the nanocell mechanism. 

The communciation module could use sound or light as a carrier between cells.  Directional beams would allow the stabalization of a three dimensionl computer LAN.   By cooperating with other nearby cells, a small group could use coherent signals to communicate with the outside world to provide medical data to doctors and researchers. 

Monitoring the cell is the central goal of the nanocell mechanism. By sampling fluids in the cell, a continuous readout of the cell situation can be measured.   Ph,  energy level, ion flows, and many more are instantly available. 

If an injury occurs, normal cells can be ruptured by pressure.  An internal mechanism could sense such an event and take measures to repair rips in the cell wall,  restore fluid balance and generally repair the damage at the cellular level rather than a flood of nano robots trying to rebuild a body from outside the cells.   Let each cell rebuild itself. 

Even in everyday life, the cells need help staying in good health.   And then there is that nasty habit of dying after a set number of reproductions.  Let’s fix that right off the bat.  And cancer is a thing of the past.  No self respecting cell is going AWOL while it’s being tended by nanocell mechanisms. 

There is something inherently more simple in fixing the myrid host of cells rather than trying to understand the body as a whole. 

After reading a story   about what we might change in our body to live longer, it occured to me that maybe we don’t have to fix the body as a whole but maybe just the cells.  It’s a matter of how you look at it. 

Say the task was to create a device that would go into your body and enter a cell, any cell, and clean it up, protect it and make it work better and forever?  Sure you could add bells and whistles but at first just fix the thing you already have.   Make a better cell.  And stay there as part of the cell.  You have just augmented that cell to do its job better.

Course there must be thousands of different types of cells.  Start with one, get that working then expand the skills of this device to handle another type of cell.  The technology would evolve until the device could handle any type cell.

In the future,  our bodies slowly change from pure biolology with many defects to  biology with technology support then to cells that are hard to say if they are biological or mechanical. They still do the same useful things as the original but they do so much more. 

Nothing new here, but a way of thinking/talking about it.  Reminds me of that suggestion to slowly replace the brain one neuron at a time to achieve immortality.  This is the same thing but now it applies to the whole body.

Slowly your body changes over to an intellently designed system rather than an evolved system.  Body cells work together the same as they do now, but they can be controlled by the intelligent immune system to work together in ways that are impossible with biological cells. Faster reactions,  logical reactions rather than knee-jerk reactions,  data communication. 

Our bodies look like they always have. Fundamentally, we are still human, but we gain the ability to modify our bodies as needed. And they don’t wear out.