A provocative article in Business Week on the possibility of brain enhancements (as opposed to the enhancement offers that are found in unsolicited e-mail):
There's no telling how today's research will change the world of work in 10 or 20 years' time. But once the tools and techniques are perfected, there's little question competitive individuals will get swept up in a race to expand their brain capacity. As that gets under way, it's destined to overturn today's paradigm of cubicled executives laboring on laptops, palm devices, and cell phones, besieged by constant software updates.
Perhaps the electronically augmented executive in 2025 will be able to absorb whole new fields of information by beaming it, Matrix-style, straight to circuits in his modified cortex. But even this scenario probably understates the workplace revolution that lies ahead. If you think Wi-Fi, BlackBerries, blogs, social networks, and Second Life are changing the way we work, wait until you see what enhanced cognitive equipment can do.
I would argue that we already have mechanically enhanced minds. When I use a spreadsheet, for example, to calculate the P/E ratio of a thousand stocks, what I am really doing is using my computer to think for me. By freeing my mind from the time and drudgery of calculating the ratios, I can use it for more productive things, such as analyzing what they mean to me and my investors.
ReplyDeleteIn a similar manner, what is paper but a way to free our minds from the tedium of having to memorize? In that sense, we have been using technology to enhance our minds for many, many years. What the Newsweek article is discussing is a different way of interfacing with the technology we are already using. The scary thing is we really don’t know how it will change us. But isn’t it true we don’t know how reading changes us? Or training our minds to use a computer and then doing so will change us?
Whether we embrace this technology or not, it is coming, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. The human race will continue to change its environment and be changed by it. Tomorrow will look nothing like today.
Pawnking,
ReplyDeleteConsider how the computer has affected our writing styles. Shelby Foote used to write with a nib pen because its slowness caused him to weigh his words. He believed it improved the quality of his writing.