DailyDirt: Who Needs A Neural Interface?
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Discussions about technology's impact on the brain are all too often couched in fear-mongering and sensationalism, but the truth remains that, like all human habits and activities, our use of devices does affect the way we think. It's difficult to say much more than that with any level of certainty, but as with all great mysteries, scientists continue to gradually chip away at it one question at a time — and sometimes figuring out how to put what they learn to work. We might not be plugging our brains directly into computers yet, but here are a few ways the two have become connected anyway:
- A growing number of studies are uncovering various specific ways that technology usage is changing human behavior and cognition. Of course, the studies vary in terms of scale and quality, and shouldn't all necessarily be taken at face value as facts. [url]
- "Brain training games" make a lot of grandiose promises about improving abilities and staving off deterioration — but do they really work? Any mental challenge is probably better than none at all, but many of these brain games may not be improving anything but your ability to play brain games. [url]
- Some mathematicians claim to have solved the problem of jet lag with an app that helps train your circadian rhythms before traveling. Supposedly it doesn't require you to adjust your sleep schedule in advance, just the light levels you are exposed too, which it helps you optimize based on carefully-tuned formulas. [url]
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Filed Under: brain, jet lag, neurology, psychology, technology
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Who Needs Condiments For Food?
you most like use condiments on your food.
Same thing with Neural interfaces. Furthermore, if there is any hope for humanity to survive past the singularity, then we must begin the process of slowly joining ourselves with machine interfaces.
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Melatonin
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Response
Probably does not help that i sleep with my mac book next to me.
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Re: Who Needs Condiments For Food?
That said, your analogy baffles me. Neural interfaces are just like condiments? Because, er, they will get us past the singularity? That makes no sense. In fact, if we ever do reach a point where humanity is constantly and intimately connected to technology, something like Soylent would likely be more popular as people turned their attentions away from material stimulation and towards direct sensory stimulation through the brain.
Either way though, at the end of the day, I'm all for continued research on neural interfacing, and have been following it since the first time scientists connected a single brain cell from a slug to a computer chip ages ago.
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Re: Re: Who Needs Condiments For Food?
The first paragraph is an apt analogy. In many ways we don't need neural interfaces, but it's a nice to have. For instance, we don't need hundreds of slaves to pick a field of cotton for free, but it sure is a nice to have.
Furthermore, your idea that we can eat goop while brilliant Monsanto brain surgeons stimulate the key parts of the brain responsible for taste flies against all previous reality. More likely is that after the corporate takeover of government, you wage slaves will only be able to afford goop. If you behave, you will be given 'taste credits' which may or may not work as advertised. More often than not, 'taste credits' advertised as a juicy steak, will taste more like a rice patty. There will be no refunds.
NOW...the second paragraph, was an entirely different thing...
If the singularity occurs, we can expect that the new machine intelligence will quickly realize that the vast majority of humanity are mentally retarded vile wastes of precious Oxygen....unless by that point humans have uplifted themselves to where they are indistinguishable from the new machine overlords. The brain implants could the first step in this direction.
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Re: Melatonin
Jetlag does not occur travelling from your parent's basement to the local seven eleven.
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Re: Re: Re: Who Needs Condiments For Food?
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