Work is already quite well advanced on using thought or brain waves, and is beginning on developing computers to mimic the human brain – Big Brother is on the way!
A recent newspaper article showed how a woman with muscular dystrophy was able to use a computer powered only by her thoughts to paint a picture of a bunch of flowers, and the reporter who wrote the article was trained to use this software in under two hours so that he could paint a very simple picture of a flower in a flower pot!
This type of use leads me to speculate and I wondered about the possibility of being able to dump the contents of someone’s brain onto a memory stick and upload them to someone else! This leads to the thought that it would no longer be necessary to go to university because you could just upload the contents of your professor’s brain – but that would mean missing out on the learning experience, so no fresher’s week, rag days, or cheap student union bars!
Well, just after thinking this, I picked up a copy of the BBC Science magazine where they were discussing this very thing and apparently, it is being considered! However, it is obviously a very complex idea, and one example discussed was taking the brain contents from someone who loves dogs to someone who is scared of them – this leads to an incompatibility in the experience.
