Book-learnin' is all very well, but it doesn't half take a long time. Luckily there are plenty of boffins out there (who got that way with book-learnin' FWIW), who are working on a way to technologically enhance our brains. In sci-fi, there is a lot of hand-wringing over the rise of AI, but the enhancement of our own minds (known as IA) gets a bit overlooked. This digital brain enhancement will apparently come in three stages:
1. Direct neural link to information. This is basically wiring your brain up to to the internet, turning you into a kind of human Google. 2. Augmenting the parts of the brain that interface with the world around us. For example, the visual cortex, a part of the brain we know a lot about, could be augmented to boost our spatial awareness and visualisation. This could essentially help us place imaginary objects in the real world using just our minds. 3. Augmenting the pre-frontal cortex - the part of the brain that pretty much does all the thinking. This would improve our judgement and problem solving to the point where people could be able to make incredible connections, beat the stock market and dream up life-changing inventions. If we were to enhance our abilities to process probability, we may even be able to essentially predict the future.
Unless we find out that there is some kind of universal limit on intelligence, there's kinda no reason why we shouldn't be able to achieve some or all of this in the next 50 years or so. Maybe one day you really will be able to download Kung Fu straight to your brain. Want to write for What Culture Science? Click here to find out how you could get paid to write about what you love.If you love the feeling of science in your brain bits, Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for more.
