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When Brains Meet Computer Brawn
prankster writes "News.com has an interesting story on among other things collective minds and nanotechnology based on the 405 page report "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science," from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce. A quote: "The human body will be more durable, healthy, energetic, easier to repair and resistant to many kinds of stress, biological threat and (the) aging process." The story even mentions our favourite enemy - the Borgs."
...Should be forced at gunpoint to sit down and watch crappy re-runs of 'The Six Million Dollar Man' on Sci-Fi channel for hours on end.
The real problem here is the 'Six Million dollar' bit. Even if nano-tech gives all the bonuses that some of its developers think it will, it's an expensive technology to develop.
Those who can pay for the tech in form of life-lengthening drugs (rich white Americans) will reap the benifits. Everyone else will get the shaft.
Don't think it won't happen. Just look at all the massive shipments of expensive AIDS drugs, condoms, and educational literature on sexual safety that are being shipped to places like Zimbabwe and South Africa where they are desperately needed.
Oh? What? No shipments of AIDS drugs to third-world countries? Imagine that...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Yeah, that sounds good, but it doesn't work so great in practice. If it did I'd be in close to perfect health. I don't smoke, drink, in fact I avoid all drugs, and not easially stressed. About those drugs, that includes legal drugs (caffine, asprin) when I can. (I'm not stupid enough to not take those that will help a specific problem when I need it, but I avoid it when I can). I don't snake between my 3 healthy balanced meals. I exercise. I brush and floss regularly. I'm not perfect about any of the above mind you, but I do a fairly good job.
I'm not in perfect health though. My back is sore, my knees sometimes hurt. Once in a while my bad ankle twists. I have a couple moles to keep an eye on because they could be cancer. I've had my teeth filled. I have several other problems that frankly you aren't that interested in me anyway.
It is all a normal part of aging. People get older and their bodys degrade. I can still do everything I could when I was 20, but some of it hurts. Experience of others suggests that in a few years that won't be true, and some more years after that I will have to stop doing things I want to do.
Sure it would be nice if I had done something a few years ago for my knees and back, but both those problems are genetic, others in my family have similear problems. It would be nice if I didn't have a bad ankle, but how was I to know that I would twist it that one day? It is worse to not exercise than to not twist your ankle.
I don't need a wonderpill, I need something that will work. They could do a knee replacement, but the replacement only lasts a few years, and then they do it again. The second replacement has to last a lifetime though because today's technology won't allow a third. So lets see more research. Not all of it will pan out, but each problem solved leaves me with a working body part that I can use for other things.
I'm not saying prevention is a bad idea. I suspect I'm healthier than the average person my age. Prevention cannot solve the basic problem of normal wear and tear, but prevention is a excellent part of the solution.
I believe that they did a story about this in the first or second season. There was this one guy who was unable to join into the group mind due to some childhood accident. He wasn't slow, just a normal person like most of us.
Anyway, he did his best to keep up with most everyone else reading archaic books, nobody needed to read anymore since they could simply think about the book and it would appear, fully in their mind.
What ended up happening was that there was a computer virus that attacked the network and started killing the nodes, which were the people that were connected to the network. Apparently, everyone, but a few people were connected into this world-wide network.
The virus began to cascade across the network killing off people and the protagonist was left more or less alone to stop this virus from continuing.
I never saw the episode myself, but it sure would be interesting to see how things could have been resolved in a world with a problem like that.
If such a network were to be created... there will be people that simply have no wish to become one with the group mind. This could actually lead us down some Borg-like path. I doubt that would really be good for humankind.
I value my individuality and do what I can to avoid becoming "One" with any group. I feel that my varied interests and activities make me a better person. Becoming a huge group mind, being able to experience the experiences of everyone else could take that all away. Why would anyone want to do that?
Society and life in general would become boring. So what if we could become stronger, live longer and learn more. If all we became were machines to service the group mind, what kind of fun would we have in our lives?
This sort of thing could happen. If the group mind wishes to experience something, it would compel pieces of itself to experience that for all of the other minds. Once that experience was done there would be a next one. Once all of those experiences were completed, what would be next?
Would the group mind wish to work on perfecting the human body and human technology? Why not, if you have experienced everything that can be experienced by the time you are 6 years old, the only thing left to do is become perfect, immortal, omniscient and indestructable.
I imagine that if Paramount decided that a story about how Star Trek's Borg were born, it would very closely resemble that.
Sure, all of this is pure conjecture, until it happens. Sure, I am talking SciFi, but aren't those scientists talking SciFi?
Personally, I would have nothing to do with jacking into a group mind. However, something along the lines of a cyberpunk netjack would be soemthing that I would be interested in.
These scientists seem to be advocating peace by giving up our individuality. For that alone, they should be locked away.
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
"I look forward to a future when everyone is at least part computer, technology is embraced, and the worst and most dangerous jobs (e.g., soldiering) will be performed by mindless clones grown for the task rather than real people."
This may seems a little idealistic of me, but, why not look forward to a future where we don't NEED mindless clones to fight for us. Never mind that mindless clones would make an absolutely horrible, incompetent army.
Why on earth would people assume that humanity could pull off anything near this complex and result in something better ?? Different maybe, trading the current set of problems faced by the human race with a completly, and more importantly, new and unknown set of problems to contend with. I don't know, it certainly seems to be overly optimistic...
In "Galapagos", Vonnegut traces all the problems of humanity to our "great brains", and he makes a good case that they are an evolutionary mistake. He wrote it before the Internet bubble, but he would have put that down as another example of a destructive delusion supportable only because our brains are too big.
The assumption that all these folks seem to be making is that we'll solve all our problems if we can only become more intelligent. What if our intelligence itself is part of the problem? If we just put more intelligence at the service of our raw emotional drives, like our need for sex, power, and to destroy those we don't like, we might just wind up destroying each other more efficiently, or (at best) create our own little mental masturbation worlds.
My favorite Dilbert strip goes something like this:
All progress is driven by technology and male hormones. So, when realistic virtual reality is invented, civilization will collapse.
"Where's Dilbert?"
"He's been in the holodeck since March."