A Work in Progress

Ramez Naam

This session was absolutely fascinating. The speaker was both entertaining and informative. Enough so that I made a point of purchasing his books later.

My Notes

• Most of the research today is for medical purposes
• One the earliest implementations was the cochlear implant
• It could eventually lead to telepathic cyborgs, but right now its usages are much more prosaic
• It's not fantasy to pump information into the human brain; it's technology
• Training time is down to less than an hour for some patients to control remote limbs with their brains
• Scientists have developed a chip to replace a damaged hippocampus (formation of long-term memories)
• Test rats ended up with "super memories"
• Prefrontal cortex implants (intelligence) more than correct functions (leading to the planet of the cyborg super apes?)
• Mostly today, our electronics are used to communicate
• Can we use this technology to transfer information between two different brains?
• Primary source of research might be medical; second is military
• Bridge data between two chips to see if the second rat can use the data from the first rat
• Neural dust
• Remote rats share information when implants are activated
• Remote professors share data
• Lower visual fidelity than normal
• This is your brain we're talking about
• Computers are perfect, right?
• Hacking and spam in your brain
• Hacking of medical devices is here now
• Check out his books Nexus and, soon, Crux