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The Right Coast
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Are You Ready for a Brain Chip? It ll Change Your Mind – WSJ

By Thomas A. Smith

The benefits of brain chips will be vastly beyond what external devices offer today. We will be able to take photos of anything we see with our eyes, just by thinking. Ditto video in 3-D. We will be able to send messages to friends by thinking them, and to hear their replies played in our minds. We ll have conversations with friends remotely, hearing their voices and ours without actually having to speak. We ll be able to talk to anyone in any language. We ll be able to remember an infinite amount of information, to retrieve any fact by asking our brain chips. We ll be able to pay for things without carrying a wallet or a phone. We ll be able to hear music piped directly into our brains. To watch movies. To take part in movies. To be totally entertained in new virtual worlds.

We ll even be able to go to sleep quickly, whenever we want. And we ll be able to get counseling instantly if we ever have suicidal thoughts.

We ll be able to get advertising pumped directly into our brains, to have images hover before our eyes that we can t turn off except for those opting for the premium subscription. Our memories will be organized for us by artificial intelligence under policies crafted by experts who will have society s best interests at heart. We won t have access to information that might be, say, Russian propaganda. If we have criminal ideas, or perhaps just countercultural notions, they will be referred to the proper authorities before it s too late.

In other words, it will be every dystopian sci-fi drama rolled into one.

via www.wsj.com

Dan Gelernter.

I’m afraid this is really happening, ladies and gentlemen. In the next ten years, I may even get one of these brain chips to fend off the ravages of Alzheimer’s, for which I evidently have a family propensity. Perhaps if they’re regulated enough? Or maybe I should just drink fish oil by the gallon and hope for the best. It would be nice to be able again to read something and remember it the next day. But yeah, as described, one would be giving up one’s humanity.