Brain Power
On the various uses (valuable or not) of the human (and primate) mind.
Scientists at Duke University have shown that it’s possible for a primate to control a machine using brain signals. The scientists trained a monkey to make a robot walk on a treadmill using its mind. The feat is impressive and the ramifications of the work could be enormous.
Cosmologists have shown (among other odd things) that the world around us is likely to be just a fleeting figment of our imagination. Since it computes to be cheaper (from a probability perspective) for a free-floating, fully populated brain to pop into existence than an entire universe (think The Matrix on acid), the cosmologists calculations indicate that it’s far more likely that I’m just imagining that I’m writing this blog entry than that I’m actually writing it… Very disheartening. With complex calculations and intense debate, theoretical cosmologists seem as fiercely certain of their predictions as they are of their ridiculousness.
There’s no accounting for the efforts of the human brain.
Meanwhile Allison Arieff, in a promising new monthly column for the NY Times, bemoans the endless torrent of flashier gadgets and electronic gizmos that replace one another in such quick succession. (Allison defends her own gadgetization “The culture of my workplace necessitates me having mobile e-mail and a calendar.” As far as I know columnists for the NY Times from 1851 until, ooh, probably around 2003 or 2004 accomplished their work without mobile e-mail and calendars.) Nevertheless, Allison strikes a resonant chord. Let the designers put their creative efforts into reducing the waste involved in new technology, or creating nifty new designs for lifesaving devices rather than snazzier cellphones. Good call, Allison.
One can easily imagine that the efforts of scientists researching the capacity for brains to control machinery will lead to both incredibly valuable innovations, as well as incredibly purile and perhaps dangerous innovations. The most obviously valuable use would be for those who currently have no control or limited control over their bodies. Being able to control machinery would give them the ability to move and act in ways that they currently cannot. Any catalog of purile uses I might devise can, I’m sure, easily be bettered. But how about cell phones that we can dial with our minds, or a TV channel changer that surfs without us lifting a finger..? As for dangerous innovations, the Pentagon is already trying to append robotics to people to make them stronger and more lethal. The success of the recent machine-mind research at Duke is a big step in that direction.
The world of innovation and thought must remain, by definition, a democratic place. Ideas don’t ask for permission to occur to us. Cosmologists will continue to follow their calculations into a fizzling fantasy-land until someone goes to the chalkboard to erase an invalid assumption and send them all tumbling. Designers of gadgets will keep designing flashier funkier gadgets until and unless, as Arieff points out, market forces direct them toward greener, leaner, less useless inventions. And mind-machine innovators will take the robot and run with it in as many directions as they can. Only demand, necessity and regulation can steer them in the right direction.
(As to wacky cosmology, I’ll cross-reference here my own thoughts on the philosophy of the universe and time.)
Tags: duke-university, mind, mind-machine, monkey, philosophy, physics, physiology, research, robotics, the-matrix
January 20th, 2008 at 10:23 am
As usual I can’t help but blame the consumer for the gadget that supersedes itself within a week because if nobody bought them they would not be on the market. Its also a technological trap. Every time a piece of computer software is released it is more and more demanding on the hardware so its inevitable that more things have to be updated. I’m pretty sure that I have used a word processor on that loaded into an Amiga and did the same job as a current one. Oh well, what is there to do.
With regards to transferring brain power into physical power I feel a bit apprehensive. There are too many problems with that amount of variables. I like cutting out variables not creating more of them, the implications of that kind of technology going wrong could be serious (and no doubt it will go wrong 1000 times before going right).
Anyway its sunday and I was bored so I wrote some stuff. Seeya