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from the Louis-Wu-would-like-a-word-with-you dept.
"What I think is so interesting is that the future is always flying cars," Leuthardt says, handing the resident his Sharpie and picking up a scalpel. "They captured the dystopian component: they talk about biology, the replicants. But they missed big chunks of the future. Where were the neural prosthetics?"
It's a topic that Leuthardt, a 44-year-old scientist and brain surgeon, has spent a lot of time imagining. In addition to his duties as a neurosurgeon at Washington University in St. Louis, he has published two novels and written an award-winning play aimed at "preparing society for the changes ahead." In his first novel, a techno-thriller called RedDevil 4, 90 percent of human beings have elected to get computer hardware implanted directly into their brains. This allows a seamless connection between people and computers, and a wide array of sensory experiences without leaving home. Leuthardt believes that in the next several decades such implants will be like plastic surgery or tattoos, undertaken with hardly a second thought.
The article reports Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are working on neural implants as well.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday December 02 2017, @09:54AM
Yes, both my hand and my eye are completely controlled by my brain. The difference is that neither my hand nor my eye is a separate sentient being.
And no, I don't think the danger is in the chip being connected to the brain. The danger is in the chip being connected to both the brain and the internet at the same time. While at the same time not removable.
Yes, I can also be manipulated through things I see or hear. Or information about me might be derived through observing my actions. Bit I have quite a bit control about what I see or hear. I cn easily close my eyes. With the ears it is not quite as easy, but the finger method works quite well. And in both cases, I can mostly avoid certain stimuli by simply avoiding the places where those stimuli are to be expected. This is a big part of the privacy of your home; it's that you have high control of what you see and hear there. Also, you have high control of the information that others get from there.
With this chip, you'll be constantly connected, probably through a proprietary interface which you don't know what exactly it does with the information. And the only way to disconnect will probably be to enter a Faraday cage.
Maybe a tinfoil hat will actually become a useful anti-surveillance tool.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.