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.

A comment inspired this more detailed view of how we get to brain augmentation.

Society, now and for the foreseeable future, is a rather resistant beast to change of the status quo. So I doubt any mainstream company will set out to add RAM, splice in processing units, or in any fundamental way try to change our brains. Too dangerous to get “politically incorrect” dumped on your plate.

The cell phone is how it started. And the thing will soon start to blend with the animal as it makes the internet into one of our core senses. The human animal will have taken the latest step in a long march toward “Information Animal”.

This is how it will happen.

We get the internet because everybody wants the internet, and then we get brain augmentation because it helps us get the internet. An upgrade of the familiar, that will usher in the fantastic.

We get audio first, oops, already got that in a bluetooth headset. Next we need video so we can see the internet as part of our life. I can see feeble laws trying to prohibit it while driving. Anyone want to hack their system so they can drive and converse/view at the same time? Let’s cheer on the forces of evolution and raise the wisdom quotient.

We need to get personal displays of information that are carefully honed to our needs on the job and while we play. First it comes in eyeglasses. The hot fad effect will make them cool once they have a cool purpose. We look at the real world and also get projected graphics. They already have such things, but it waits on the software to deliver the right stuff and to handle our feedback. Subvocal sounds, eye point direction and finger gestures become the input channels. All this depends on software. We are really still in the early years of internet access.

Youth picked up the phone and made it into something new. Now the phone morphs into an internet appliance and then merges with our bodies. We plateau at eyeglasses and bluetooth earphones for a moment and then the earphone disappears into the ear canal and a small, permanent version cuddles up to the ear drum and sets up shop. The eyeglasses morph into contact lens that derive their energy needs from light energy and overlay graphics onto what we see. The graphics are like the HUD of an aircraft display, delivering data from the powerful computer on our belt or purse. But the content is Internet sites filtered though our own personal filters to deliver what we want, when we want it.

I’m not talking about viewing static web pages. That is old style internet viewing. Only legacy sites preserve this mode. Modern sites deliver value that integrates into your real life. You download software into your own computer to process the internet and extract value from the torrent of noise.

The contact lens suck in more capability (software, hardware) and start to look out at the world from its own camera. It provides face recognition features and now you know everyone’s name and can see it and all the info you have on someone just by looking in their direction or seeing their name on a site.

The contact lens gains lasers and now it writes on your retina. When the artificial camera gets better than your own lens, it writes perfect images of both the real world and overlaid graphics. Now you have telephoto, infrared, high resolution vision. With overlaid Internet. Your spoken word is relayed to anyone on the planet via the Internet if you desire to make the connection.

So now you have audio and video seamlessly hooked up to the Internet. You hear and see the world and the Internet as one thing. You know whatever your software figures out is important and displays to you. This software is very important. It is smart. It becomes the Life Assistant you never knew you needed. Talk about pets! Assistant software with personality will be the rage.

Now, can you see why someone will enhance their system to embed it into their head? Get it powered by the body, protected from accidental injury. We put our own brain inside a bone case, seems like a reasonable thing to add these tools as part of our body inside the skull. A long term relationship. Probably still need a relay unit on our belt to get the signal to a cell tower. At least until the cell tower becomes part of every piece of furniture, our car, signs, or the roadway.

Once we have hardware under the skin, it is simple to make direct nerve connections. Once we have hardware connected to the nerves ( our senses and our brain ), then software transforms that hardware into brain augmentation – of the serious sort. Permanent experiential memory of what our camera eyes see. Data banks to have access to data on your job. Special function software to make you a better business man or chess player.

And on it goes.

Hi, I saw this article today from Science Daily and it reminded me of an idea I’m using in a novel.
Contact lens with electronics built in.

The idea is that the cell phone has developed from the old hand lifted device to the new “carry anywhere” phone of today (2008) and it will continue to develop along the following lines.

The kids of today are creating a new use as text and acronyms take over the conversations of youth.
Technology will feed that as they develop eye and ear accessories that are always connected. Both to the internet (as the medium) and to the phone descendants that will blend with our bodies.

In less than ten years the optical equivalent of contact lens plus the electronics to make them fully display capable with a resolution around 4000×3000 (see the article above) will give us total and immersive contact with the internet and all that it provides.

This means that first we will become assisted and have continuous audio and video interchange with anyone we know. More specifically, we will learn to “dial”, speak to and communicate with anyone as if they are in the room with us. In fact, it will become essential that anyone involved in commerce or fad based social groups will have to have this technology.

As the technology improves, it will become part of our body rather than an accessory we wear. Our eyeballs have plenty of room inside to hold full color laser projectors that write directly to the retina with a resolution far beyond that of any ordinary human. Remember, our eyes have a simple lens – nothing like the high quality lens even on a cheap camera.

In the limit, we will become a wired organism. We will experience each other in an entirely new medium of cyberspace that rivals the descriptions from Neuromancer. We will cease to talk to anyone beyond arms length without automatically slipping into internet connection mode. It will be seamless. And so much more intense than ordinary face to face conversation. To speak to someone beyond ten feet away, our electronic connection will take over and bring them face to face with us through the eye and ear that is internet connected.

If you’ve read my first post on brain augmentation, you may have had a visceral reaction to the idea of slowly converting your brain into a machine. I don’t blame you, it is a hard to swallow idea. The clone idea to get a new body also repelled me. Growing a new liver and then implanting it into my existing body seems good, whereas growing an entire body from my DNA seems creepy. It’s not me, it’s another body laying there on the table. You are going to put my brain into that thing? I don’t think so. It will take time to adapt to such ideas, but we will.

Here is what will happen and why it will work. As research proceeds, we will create functional brain material with nano hardware. We will do this to repair brain damage, to give sight to the blind, to restore function where it has been lost or never existed. There will also be the early adopters who want to plug into the internet and to augment their brains with new functionality. Both groups will push for development and FDA permission (here in the USA). And at first it will be controversial with passionate people on both sides.

First we will develop add-on hardware for our biological brains. These are small hardware devices that lay in the folds on the surface of our brain and send non-organic tendrils down into the outermost layers of our brain. Those tendrils will establish connections to existing cells in the same way that ordinary brain cells make connections. This will be an interface between the hardware laying on the surface and our normal brain. The hardware will be implanted surgically at first, but will move to nano assembly in situ when that is practical and relatively safe. The 2020′s will be a hotbed of development for brain augmentation.

This add-on hardware will be socially accepted because it is like a prosthesis, eyeglasses, or hearing aid. But it will pave the way for more functionality and more conversion of biological cells to hardware cells. Augmented workers will be valuable in business. They will have photographic memory, instant mental access to databases anywhere in the world, mental access to their phone and computer which allows them to monitor and guide their own work applications remotely.

Society, or the more technical strata, will grow used to the idea of augmentation and that will produce great benefits. Then a few daring souls will allow the conversion from biological brain cells to hardware brain cells to proceed further. Greater and greater proportions of the brain will convert. Someone will allow total conversion and prove ( as far as it can be proven ) that they are the same person. Perhaps someone terminally ill will volunteer. It certainly is a possible road to immortality. And much more theoretically safe than freezing the brain and hoping someone can repair it someday.