I read an interesting article recently about the future of BMIs. You can see the article below, if you want.
You might ask, “David, why is this relevant?” I doubt anyone is willing to read through that 30,000 word monster, but the article does discuss a lot of things about the future of the BMI industry, and how, through the power of increasingly advanced technology, we will be able to transcend inefficient “communication by words.”
It also discusses many fixes for current brain and spine-based problems, such as deafness or blindness. Current technologies to alleviate blindness and deafness are primitive, but you can sure bet that they’ll improve in the future.
Having watched A Beautiful Mind, I’ve come to realize that these incredible innovations– things that will make quadriplegics skip and jump again, things that will make painters out of blind men and composers out of the deaf– cannot necessarily fix what is truly deep down in our mind. If something goes wrong in there, well, it’ll still be wrong.
The article discusses how if complete knowledge of the brain equates to travelling a mile, we’ve only discovered about three inches of that mile. We might know which neurons trigger which parts of the brain, or which chemicals cause happiness or sadness, but we cannot give instructions to the brain to activate those specific neurons. Even if we did, we simply don’t possess the proper “programming language,” and if we did, it would take an absurd amount of resources to implement.
The article also mentions that we might be able to change how certain sensations feel. In the far future, with super-advanced BMIs, people can even relegate pain to something far less pleasant– like an alert, or a noise. “STOP USING THAT LEG, IT HAS BEEN SEVERED,” might pop up in the corner of your eye, far preferable to white-hot lances of pain rocketing across your spine. But the affliction Nash had was one of perception. To him, nothing seemed wrong, so even with this super advanced tech, he would not be able to fix himself. The only cure was to battle against the most powerful enemy– one’s own brain.
It’s a sobering thought, and it encourages solipsism as much as the Matrix did. What if I had been suffering similar ailments? Would anyone know? Because I certainly wouldn’t.