Elon Musk is best known for Space X, Tesla, smoking weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and sending outlandish tweets. But there’s another secretive project that this real life Tony Stark is involved in that could be even more transformative than everything else he’s doing combined: Neuralink. This neuroscience venture wants to give paralyzed people the ability to control devices with their minds but it’s their long-term goal that’s truly exciting: creating a brain to computer interface similar to the fictitious Neuralace from Ian M. Bain’s Culturenovels that will let people access the Internet with their minds. Armed with this new-found ability to reference an unlimited amount of information at a moment’s notice humanity will be able to rise to incredible new heights.
As exciting as this possibility seems it was long considered to be a science fiction dream. The longest of long shots. After all, if we don’t fully understand how our mind’s work, where consciousness comes from, why we dream, etc. then how can we really expect to figure out how to merge them with computers? Doing so would be a daunting task that would involve unnecessarily drilling holes into our skulls and implanting chips that may get rejected by our existing wetware. How many of us would really be comfortable becoming early adopters for a technology like that?
Well, as it turns out the answer is a lot of us. Thousands of people are already clamoring for the opportunity to become enhanced cybernetic organisms. Especially since the idea is coming to us from the messiah Elon Musk. And now they’ll have a better understanding of exactly what this new technology may look like as we get our first public look at Neuralink’s line of thinking with several advances setting the stage for what is to come.
According to The Verge, “The first big advance is flexible ‘threads,’ which are less likely to damage the brain than the materials currently used in brain-machine interfaces. These threads also create the possibility of transferring a higher volume of data, according to a white paper credited to ‘Elon Musk & Neuralink.’ The abstract notes that the system could include ‘as many as 3,072 electrodes per array distributed across 96 threads.’ The threads are 4 to 6 μm in width, which makes them considerably thinner than a human hair. In addition to developing the threads, Neuralink’s other big advance is a machine that automatically embeds them.”
Obviously, there is still a long way to go before “threading” becomes the hottest new trend. For starters, learning to use the implant is said to be the equivalent of learning to play the piano. No easy task. But that won’t stop Musk from continuing to push the envelope, from continuing to dare us to dream bigger. And now that the groundwork has been laid and the initial technology developed there’s no going back. In fact, we may even be on the verge of conducting the first human tests as early as 2020 with successful mouse testing already taking place. Suffice it to say, at this point the cat is out of the bag.
If human testing is successful Neuralink could wind up giving us an unprecedented fourth brain region. The first is the Basal Ganglia, the reptilian or primal brain that less evolved species operate from. The second is the limbic system which imbues us and certain other mammals with emotions. And the third is what separates us from everyone else, our neocortex which provides us with the ability to have rational thoughts. But soon we may have a fourth threaded layer, voluntarily implanted into us by Neuralink, enabling us to take evolution into our own hands and keep pace with the latest advances in AI.
Perhaps now you see why I said that Neuralink could be more impactful than everything else that Musk is working on which is really saying something when you consider that he is also working on revolutionizing energy, transportation, and space travel!
Is Neuralink the Greatest Idea Ever?
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