Mind Feast

I have decided that I am going to write a book. A book is good. Things can be done with a book. There is no matter of university, location, or people; between me and writing a book. I can start yesterday. I don’t need anyone.

I already have a plot. I don’t know where it came from but my book is going to be about The Singularity and Mind Uploading.

The Singularity, as opposed to plain old singularity which was the point and state of matter before the Big Bang and also something to do with black holes, The Singularity, refers to the point when computing power becomes equal to the human mind. It is also characterised by rapid advances in technology and artificial intelligence.

The matching of the human intellect can be done a variety of ways. The first option does not rely on complete understanding of the functions of the mind, but simply recreating it neuron for neuron. This could be a complete ‘fleshy’ brain created by scanning sections of the brain with an advanced electron scanning microscope and making it piece by piece. The second involves deploying programmed nanobots into the skull that will scan each neuron, replace it with a synthetic, check the health of the individual and continue until the whole brain is replaced; this brain can then be removed and placed in a robot. The third involves slightly more understanding of the mind, and it relies on the theory that the neurons are the ‘hardware’ of the system and thoughts are the ‘software’. This method would recreate the neural architecture in a synthetic substance and then run the thought process as a program through it.

Running close to this vein of thought is the theory that with the advent of this technology we will be able to “upload the human mind”.

The fourth option is somewhat along these lines and would require far more understanding. This method would use a computer-brain interface, rather like the Matrix. All the thoughts, feelings, memories and personality of the person (regardless of whether they were conscious of these at the time) would be converted into digital form and copied onto a digital medium such as a hard drive. The question of whether a mind could be conscious during the process is an interesting one. With the right technology these would then be able to be browsed just like anything else and even experienced or copied to a third party through the interface. We would finally be able to know exactly how another person feels and experiences the world. But of course this technology is limited by the fact that we can only recreate two of the five senses, cannot capture the thought process and do not know what sort of data output one would get from the human mind were we able to capture it.

And this is where my story begins.

The great question that seems to have eluded many people is whether this copy will be conscious or inert. If it were conscious then one gets into the question of human rights, the soul, how the mind would react to living in a computer system rather than a body, how the copy would progress as a person from its owner, how consciousnesses would interact with the controls a computer could give it, and with other consciousnesses across the internet (supposing this never became obsolete), the concept of aging or the lack thereof, resulting in immortality, being able to back up one’s mind, whether a virtual computer existence is better than reality; and the list goes on…

If it were inert then it would be just as interesting and complicated. It would be possible to copy, back up, or send any or all of the data acquired from your mind. Through the interface one would be able to acquire knowledge in a second. A whole high school education – zap! Without leaving your chair. But then things get complicated. What sort of data would you be extracting, sending and receiving? Once again we are unsure of what sort of data output one would get. The sorting process would be exhausting, subjective, and time consuming. The only thing we know for sure would be that the data would be dirty. How could you take your friends, your home life, your clothes, your misbehaviour or achievement, out of your memories of high school? It is way too subjective. Say someone wanted to know about the pyramids. So someone else on the other side of the world extracted all their knowledge of the pyramids. But what does that knowledge consist of? The memory of sitting at home watching a documentary, the memory of reading a series of books, the images of the pages, the emotion evoked by this person’s passion for the pyramids. Or perhaps it would be the memory of someone who actually went to the pyramids, complete with what they ate, their toilet visits and their calls home. It would be almost impossible to distil.

And what would become of this information? Would the mind automatically treat it as its own memories? Would it overwrite anything? Would you be able to perceive that you acquired this knowledge from another source? Or would that line become blurred the more vicarious knowledge you acquired? This could quite possibly result in the contaminating of millions of minds all having to live by the words of philosopher John Locke “If you remember thinking something in the past, then you are the same person as he or she who did the thinking.” This would rely largely on whether the mind was conscious during the transfer. If it was then the person would have the memeory of the transfer and the copy would not.

But would it be possible to record memeories and knowledge through an objective medium much like video but rich with all the other senses? Or would it be too unnatural to process?

How would the mind cope with the influx of information in all the detail of its very experience? The sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical and emotional feelings, internal monolouges, and distortions of perception? Would it be too much or simply a matter of the mind adjusting to its new medium and using its natural unconscious method for picking out only the important details?

And far more complicated than that would be whether this data would be compatible with the neural structure of the recipient. It has been found that many physical differences in brain structure contribute to mental differences between people. One way to take this out of the equation would be to standardise brain structure among humans through cloning. Thus ruining diversity, individuality and breeding forever.

Also in the category of sinister government control, would be the possibility that thought control could be exercised on any or all of the people connected to their interface through the internet. If the synthetic recording device was possible, manufactured memories could be created, falsified and implanted into every member of the population. Knowledge would become worthless, just as music has. We would be able to download it from the internet for free, never having to leave our own homes to visit places and people. If clean synthetic recording wasn’t possible memory fraud still would be; and people would be hiring themselves out as recording devices and selling their memories on the internet. Radio, newspapers, television, video, and being there – every medium for experience that we know now (and maybe even the internet) would be obsolete. All educational institutions, tourist destinations, and most jobs would also be a thing of the past. Music, I am confident, would still survive for a time. Until the ability to play and instrument and sing was a downloadable commodity, the creation of a song could be recorded as a thought, and transmitted across the whole world simultaneously; which would quickly result in the exhaustion of all the combinations of instruments, melodies and beats. Then music would be dead too. Movies would die first though; people would actually be able to experience another person’s complete life in all the details possible. Dream recording would be an interesting advance, quite possibly becoming the art-house movies of the day. Whether anyone would like to remain as a fleshy, vulnerable, mortal human is also an important factor. Human machine integration would have its own weaknesses as well. But it would be impossible not to have mobile devices of some sort, since the machines would need repairs. Sheer machines would not be able to grow, heal, or die. And if everyone made the transition from man to machine we would no longer consume food, water or oxygen, only energy; which would of course need to come from someplace and would produce its own form of waste. The mediums from which the computers were built would become invaluable, and inevitably run out. On the upside humans would no longer be ‘human’ and would be almost completely removed from the ecosystem, resulting in dramatic positive or negative consequences for the environment. If Earth progressed down this path we could quite possibly become a dead, metallic, powerless wasteland of a planet.

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