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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."
It's not the Borgs, it's the Borg!
Do not underestimate an angry mob of Trek fans!
...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!
Finally a post that should REALLY have the "borg" icon and you stick a motherboard next to it!! Doh!
:)
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I'm all for technology, but this looks like an attempt to make the "wonderpill" to cure all human ailments (sp?). I think we should devote some of that energy into preventing some of them, instead of demanding an instant cure for the problems we inflict on our own bodies. You know: stress, alcohol, drugs, tobacco etc. I'm not trying to push the view that you should abstain from all this (well, drugs you should avoid though), but realize that there are no magic cures for the problems these things cause to your body and mind.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
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.
And sluggish, overweight hackers chugging Mt. Dew everywhere rejoice.
Well, rejoice briefly, and then start gasping and grabbing for the ol' inhaler.
--saint
If you've ever looked at an unfiltered list of search entries on Google, then the last thing you'd want to do is link your mind to a thousand other people...
Of course the tech will only be available to the ultra-rich at first.
Suddenly the Borg Gates pictues makes all the more sense.
Apparently, this is already pretty close to being a medical reality, which begs the question of when the rest of us can get some of these units to play Halo directly in our heads! :)
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
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?
The plural form of the word Borg is Borg. No s on the end. Kinda like the word moose, ever heard anybody say mooses or meese?
;)
Somebody hasn't watched enough Star Trek.
"local groups of linked enhanced individuals" as well as "a global collective intelligence."
The minute they show me that a bunch of chimps can solve a problem a 10 year old human could solve is the minute I'll believe these claims of a global collective
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
The basic premise is that science must first learn how to create machines that can build structures atom by atom (a Universal Assembler (UA)). Once this machine is created, it can build other UA's and will vastly expand the materials and machines that mankind can make while drastically reducing their cost.
A real world example would be ribosomes in the human body. They are the molecular structures that take their instructions from RNA in cells to make all the proeteins that created us. Not only do they have the ability to make the pieces that go into making humans, but they also have the ability to coordinate the process so that all of the intermediate stages support a living organism! One set of 'Wet' Nanotechnology involves trying adopt the control mechanism that tells the ribosomes what to do. Once this can be accomplished, the ribosomes could make new UAs that are more easily controlled and that can make a wider variety materials than proteins.
Given that nature got to where we are by trial and errors (albeit over millions of years), it is not unreasonable to surmise that man can reengineer this process for his use (in a much shorter period of time).
Another important tenet of the book is that Nanotechnology and UA's will one day arrive regardless of what we do to stop it. The premise is that it is important for developed (and hopefully benevolent) nations to be first to create the technology in order to create nano-based defenses against potentially aggressive destabilizing regimes.
For the text of Drexlers books as well as several other eductional piences on molecular technology, visit: http://www.zyvex.com/nano/
God forbid that we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. T. Jefferson.
"Now, if these improvements could be made hereditary, that'd be cool!"
Well, develop things like the Borg nano-probes, and <ahem> inject them during sex. They end up integrated into the baby. Set them to activate when the baby's skin is exposed to sunlight, and voila - instant implants.
Maran
"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.
Worse - doesn't even have to be recorded yet. One person has the idea for the music, and you already know it.
Of course, this does mean the eventual mass-lynching of anyone who writes for N'Sync, Britney et. al., so it can't be all bad.
Cheers,
Ian
Not necessary to inject them, they can be delivered through the umbilical cord. Problem is, how do we prevent nano-machines from destroying or damaging a fetus (they might think it's an invading hostile organism)
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
It seems to me that this is the religion of the future.
When all of human consciousness is merged into a universal network, what exactly do we have? We have a huge, self-aware "organism" that contains all of human knowledge within itself, and is constantly learning and growing. The internet may be the birth of this future network.
What does this being encompass in a thousand years? A million? A billion?
In this scenario, the universe slowly becomes a self-aware entity. The universe is conscious. Could this be considered god?
Maybe the reason that Borg members so much time standing around comatose was that the Collective spent 90% of its processing cycles dealing with a flood of subspace messages offering Viagra, Hot Barnyard Action, and Schlong Lengtheners.
Stefan
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."
You're a Dr. Who fan and yet you have the balls to point fingers at "no-budget special effects"?
We could always combine this technology with some POPULATION PLANNING.... Hell, fuck the technology, let's just go for the Population Planning! Stop all these fertility drug freaks from popping out 6 retarded premature children, stop 3rd worlders from having 27 children over a 45 year lifespan, while at the same time trying to improve quality of education and life for the people who are ALIVE already... Then we can achieve a stable population, give us all 350+ year lifespans, and start looking at the long term. Plan for colonization of other worlds, etc...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
This report is very timely. I was one of 6 foreigners out of 2500 attendees at a conference in Kyoto recently on the fusion of these fields. AI was not discussed, but Energy and Environment were major topics.
It is not 30 years away, or trying to make some "wonder pill". The primary points are:
1. Biotech is currently major driving force in economy.
2. IT as a tool, not an end in and of itself.
3. Nanotech (which currently DOES have business applications) is the next competitive landscape. There is a grey area between biotech and nanotech, for example dna motors.
4. Major need for interdisciplinary efforts to make the most of contemporary science, and the fusion of Government, Industry and Education (which was the title of the conference).
5. These, and education to create the most creative, science-minded researchers, as key to national competitivity.
One leadup meeting on nanotech and biotech at Tokyo University Medical School earlier this year was held to coincide with the nanotech conference of the year in the U.S. The recent meeting in Kyoto featured the most famous biotech entrepreneur in the U.S. and the head of MIT's tech ventures program (because Japan's schools are not conducive to spinoffs).
This is real stuff, even if it seems futuristic. The bottom line is research that is happening today and I expect multidisciplinary, creative thinking is something slashdotters usually respect. The interesting thing is it's not just Japan, there are new nanotech labs being built all over the place (Oxford just built one, and Cornell U. has a new building going up now, just for two examples). This is a historical opportunity, in other words we are stomping on the bottom of the S curve (see page 36 of the PDF). Anyone with similar thoughts, looking forward to your email.
The future will start in a moment
Yeah... and here's the quote that Slashdot provides me for this article - ;-)
"Here comes Mr. Bill's dog." -- Narrator, Saturday Night Live