In the not too distant future, technology is going to become more and more integrated into our lives and our bodies. From Apple watch to medical implants, and augmented senses for the visual and hearing impaired, the integration has already begun.
Eventually, the devices we use to communicate will be so small and unobtrusive we’ll have full connection with the Internet, controlling the tiny device directly with our minds through a direct brain connection.
When this technology is released, it will essentially make telepathy a common and easy way to communicate with each other. You can send and receive messages with friends and family just by thinking.
Not only can you ‘talk’ to each other just by thinking, but everyone will also have instant access to the internet and cloud computing. Full and perfect knowledge at your control. Asking factual questions to each other will be unnecessary – the link will be so fast that is almost like the internet is a part of your own memory.
Proficient users of the ‘brain chip’ will know everything there is to know, and be able to run algorithms and complex equations in their head.
What will a meeting of friends look like? With 6 people around the table, there’ll be a layer of telepathic conversation underlying the out loud conversation. What’s the topic of conversation? The internet still won’t know everything instantly, even if everything is recorded.
Talking about people and recent events will still be normal. And despite the massive amounts of information available, it won’t all be discovered by everyone. Just think how much information you can get today on the internet, but that doesn’t mean you do. You only encounter the small slice relevant to your life.
So your friends might be mostly there, but one of them couldn’t make it. He could still join in on the conversation wirelessly. You could be having several conversations at the same time, like you do with text messages. And it doesn’t have to be instant either. Several live conversations at the same time inside your brain would get overwhelming, but the messages could be held in an inbox to be played at your demand. That way if you’re doing something that requires focus, you can (by thought alone) turn off notifications, and when you’re done just check if you got any tele-messages to respond to. Things like turning on and off notifications and checking messages will be so seamless that its completely automatic.
The conscious human interface for the brain chip falls away as much as possible until after several iterations it even picks up on your subconscious signals. Requests and responses are so fast that sometimes may be undetectable by even the user, giving superhuman ability. It feels to the user like they ‘just know’. It will be outsourced memory, with memories available that you didn’t create but you’re just using then.
It’ll also change the entire education system. When the tech is so widespread that children also have brain chips, schools will have to completely change to adapt. Schools now may be able to ban phones in school since nearly every kid over 8 has an iPhone, but something so innate and connected won’t be able to be banned. There’s no turning it off.
With all knowledge and computing power innate, it would make today’s standard teaching techniques all but irrelevant. Would school even be needed at all? The memorization of facts, the standardized tests, the learning of equations. These will all be able to be done by any kid. Even if he doesn’t even understand the question! A quick search of the web and with no delay would be able to answer any simple fact or equation based question.
Beyond the kindergarten level basics, most of the grades of elementary through highschool’s content can be skipped. Students might get an overview on each subject as a party of the ‘higher level’ classes. The focus switches from memorization to analysis and applied techniques.
In a chemistry class, they don’t have to talk about individual elements with their atomic weights etc. When talking about gold for example, your subconscious will pull up based on context that it’s atomic symbol is AU, it’s a metal, good conductor, etc. All this info is on the tip of your tongue, ready to be used in equations or conversation. So the class can move faster to advanced calculations and experiment design.
In math class it’s much of the same. You know all the kids can do the equations, so you can teach them how to apply it to real situations or theoretical math.
Even aside from the individual access to knowledge, kids will also be in constant communication with each other. Not only students in the same class, but all their friends at school as well as outside. It could pose a major problem with distraction, since the kid could be sitting in class, but really just chatting with his new girlfriend silently, not really being present to learn. When it comes to testing time it will be the same, they’ll be sharing their answers and working together.
New tests will have to be designed which accept this fact, that traditional “cheating” is impossible to stop, and individual tests might not even be possible. Or maybe the testing process is on the students ability to use the network to their maximum ability — not so much focused on the subject matter itself. Questions or prompts could be so complex that any two students with the same answers would be flagged for cheating because it’s unlikely that their answers could be so similar without colluding. Of course all of the tests are performed digitally, and so can be screened for an algorithm to determine likelihood of ‘cheating’.
When it comes to the ‘real world’ – working life after school – individuals’ capacities are greatly increased. You could have real-time artíficial intelligence teachers and coaches in your head giving you play by play instructions on how to do anything. By sharing your view, they could also get a heads-up display on the progress. Let’s say for example, a water pipe bursts in your house. Assuming that you’re not in a fully automated home, and it needs to be fixed manually, you can do it yourself instead of calling a plumber. It will be much faster and minimize damage. First thing you do is open up a plumbing coach program and share your vision. Based on where the water is coming from, the coach gives you instructions in real-time on how to fix it, tailored to your house and specific situation. It tells you to cut into the wall with a bread knife, since you don’t have any specialized tools. This pipe is going to require an emergency operation. As soon as you lay sight on the broken pipe, a new exact copy of the one is ordered by rush drone delivery to be there in a few minutes, along with the appropriate tools. Next the coach instructs you to run to your water valve and turn off all water. At least that will stop the flow and your robotic vacuums can get to work sopping it up. In a few minutes, the replacement pipe and tools arrive, and you’re walked through the steps to replace the broken pipe with the new one. Now that the problem is fixed, it looks like you have minimal water damage, more like just a big spill, and your robovacs have gotten it all up by now. The only place that really got damaged is the drywall near the pipe. Since that’s a more involved job and not urgent, your coach offers to call a carpenter to come repair it tomorrow. You confirm, and a potential disaster was averted, for the fraction of what it would have cost to wait for a plumber to arrive. Anyone watching this from a third-person perspective would simply see someone who acted quickly and knew all the right things to do in this emergency situation.
Other intellectual and professional pursuits will be affected similarly. The learning curve will be very steep since new learners will never ‘get stuck’ — they can be coached through any new task in real time. To the casual observer, it will look like they are already masters of the craft. Eventually they will pick it up and not need the coaching any more, or they could continue to invest in it to become among the best in the world. Nuances, physical ability, and fast reactions can’t really be coached, but any type of knowledge work could be. Let’s say you are tired of your work in marketing, and you want to become a computer programmer. Assuming you can afford the coaches fees, you could start in a programming job tomorrow. Of course you’d be slower than more experienced professionals, but the coach would walk you through the framework and thought process and even tell you exactly what to type at first. It would also be able to catch any of your errors so you’d be shipping perfectly valid code from day one.
Aside from general computer intelligence, this brain-Internet connection could be the most massively disrupting new technology we could stand to encounter in the near future. It would lead to a world that is completely unrecognizable to us today. Of course the question has to be asked: to get these superpowers, who would you allow to put a chip in your brain?
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