From Wi-Fi to a Global Brain

Giu1i0 Pri5c0 Let’s take a few short and long term trends together and see what may be the long term future of the net: first wired connectivity for everyone, then wireless connectivity for everyone, then the development of working brain-machine interfaces and the emergence of a Global Brain.
Trend 1: Everyone uses the net more and more - Trend 2: Wi-Fi is gaining more and more momentum - Trend 3: The possibility to develop brain-machine interfaces is being taken more and more seriously - So sooner or later everyone will be permanently linked to a wireless net, and a working neural interfacing technology will have been developed. It is easy to see that at this point somebody will develop a new generation of killer apps: neural interfaces to the wireless net.

Giu1i0 Pri5c0, November 30, 2003

Let’s take a few short and long term trends together and see what may be the long term future of the net: first wired connectivity for everyone, then wireless connectivity for everyone, then the development of working brain-machine interfaces and the emergence of a Global Brain.
Trend 1: Everyone uses the net more and more. According to a nationwide study released Sunday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 31 percent of Americans can be considered highly tech-savvy. These Americans all use the Internet, are very likely to have cell phones, are more likely than other Americans to have personal digital assistants and are more likely to have engaged in what the Pew project calls “leading-edge technology behaviors,” such as paying for online content and connecting to the Net wirelessly. This is quite evident but it is good seeing it confirmed by a study. Another trend mentioned by the report is the growth of wideband connections like DSL that permit being permanently online. This is not only a North American trend, but is happening all over the world: as a matter of fact usage of the net in Europe is growing faster than in North America, and in the developing world even faster. Sooner or later, everyone will be online all the time.
Trend 2: Wi-Fi is gaining more and more momentum. From Forbes: “Wi-Fi has won by a landslide. Wi-Fi has just about everything going for it: cheap chips, free spectrum, public hot spots sprouting up like espresso machines and magic that’s migrating from geeky computers to familiar products like cameras and TVs. In ads, commercials and blogs, the Wi-Fi Nation Googles merrily from parks and patios, beaches and bars”. The rest of the article is a guide to new gadgets to plug in a wireless home network. Of course since the article is dated August 2003, by this time it is already obsolete. Things are moving fast in the Wi-Fi world. I will now start modifying my home Wi-Fi network to permit everyone in a radius of a few hundred m accessing the net, and add a node to the local wireless community network. More and more people will do this everywhere, creating growing islands of wireless connectivity built by the people, for the people, that will completely cover major cities with wireless metropolitan area networks and then extend to rural areas. Nicholas Negroponte says: “In the future, each Wi-Fi system will also act like a small router, relaying to its nearest neighbors. Messages can hop peer-to-peer, leaping from lily to lily like frogs. You have a broadband telecommunications system, built by the people, for the people. Carriers are aware of this, but they discount it because they do not feel there will be sufficient coverage. They are wrong”.
Trend 3: The possibility to develop brain-machine interfaces is being taken more and more seriously. From the DARPA Defense Science Office (DSO): The Brain Machine Interfaces Program represents a major DSO thrust area that will comprise a multidisciplinary, multipronged approach with far reaching impact. The program will create new technologies for augmenting human performance through the ability to noninvasively access codes in the brain in real time and integrate them into peripheral device or system operations. So, big governments are spending big money on the development of brain interfaces. From a recent Betterhumans article: “Neural interfaces that translate neuron activity have demonstrated tremendous promise for allowing paralyzed people to do such things as type, operate wheelchairs and operate robotic prosthetics. The interfaces could also restore movement to existing limbs by bypassing damaged spinal cord areas that prevent brain signals from reaching muscles. While linking the brain directly with machines was once considered science fiction, advances over the past few years have made it increasingly viable”.
So sooner or later everyone will be permanently linked to a wireless net, and a working neural interfacing technology will have been developed. It is easy to see that at this point somebody will develop a new generation of killer apps: neural interfaces to the wireless net. They will be implemented first as expensive gadgets for the rich, then become a working tool for the masses like it has happened for mobile phones in Western countries, then perhaps be implemented as inheritable genetic modifications and become a part of our genetic makeup.
Everyone’s mind will be permanently linked to the wireless net, and through the net to everyone else’s mind. This is working telepathy for everyone and will trigger very radical changes. In particular telepathic groupware-enabled groups - groups able to instantly share and elaborate thoughts - may produce an enormous acceleration in the development and deployment of new ideas and plans, and cause the emergence of group minds: once we reach a certain level of understanding of human brains and ability to directly affect them, we’ll be able to network those brains. At the simplest level, this would function like telepathy, but with tight enough integration and replication between those minds, two different people would come to view themselves as one person with two bodies. This would provide a new sort of immortality. The Principia Cybernetica Web, a very interesting website which tries to tackle age-old philosophical questions with the help of the most recent cybernetic theories and technologies, has a very rich section dedicated to the emergence of a Global Brain. The best place to start is the Global Brain FAQ.