There is a good chance that you spent a lot of time on your phone today, maybe you had to work on a deadline for an assignment with your fellow students via Zoom or maybe you just listened to new music via Spotify.
In fact, every person is connected 24/7 with his phone, a separate device on which you spend a lot of time in your life. Isn’t it really a bad idea if our phone will soon be part of your body? It sounds quite illogical, but there is a good chance that everyone will have a smartphone implemented in the brain. Not literally, of course, but just a small mobile device of a few millimeters. We already have the technology built into our computers, phones, watches, shoes and cars. Why not also in ourselves?
If you would believe the experts, we are already very close to this scenario as they claim that implantable technology will be commercially available as early as 2023 (cbsnews, 2016). Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, last month presented the progress of his project Neuralink, an implantable brain machine interface that should help cure neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s, dementia and spinal cord injuries. During the presentation, which could be followed live via YouTube, three small pigs with brain implants that had been applied with a sewing machine robot, were seen walking around, where the viewers could watch the brain activity and neurons firing via a screen in real time. It is still unclear when the brain implants of Elon Musk will be ready for market, but he did indicate that Neuralink is working towards a cheap and reliable brain implant that will be commercially available to billions of people in the near future (technology review, 2020).
What do you think about a brain implant and Elon Musk’s plans? Will this cure diseases and improve people’s lives?
I know one thing for sure, I will skip this time. I do need my night rest and receiving Spotify commercials seems a bit more pleasant on my phone than echoing through my brain.
Sources:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-mobile-phone-of-the-future-will-be-implanted-in-your-head/
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/30/1007786/elon-musks-neuralink-demo-update-neuroscience-theater/
Hi Elias,
Thank you for this interesting blog post! I agree that it will be fascinating to see how this new type of technology will eventually be used in different types of industries. I think that most people agree that these brain implants are a good thing if they can help cure neurological conditions and other diseases, but where will we go from there? Elon musk talked in his Neuralink presentation about the ability of writing or communication just by thinking about what you want to write, or having the ability to connect your brain with other external devices and being able to control these devices by what seems to be telepathy. Although it seems amazing to have these abilities in theory, it is a slippery slope from there to something that could have disastrous negative effects on our lives. How can companies like Neuralink guarantee that these devices are safe to use, and that no external parties can tamper with them? I think it important that regulatory institutions have a proactive stance towards setting regulations about what companies like Neuralink are allowed to do with these devices. If they don’t, we might end up in a situation were we lose sight of what these implants are actually doing with our brain, and who is listening in on what we are thinking.
It’s safe to say that I will skip this innovation as well. Having unskippable ads playing through my brain surely doesn’t seem like fun to me!
Best,
Max