Scientists Develope "Brain Chip"

In My Humble Opinion
1

From the following article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2843099.stm
I have to admit, it might be kind of nice to have a chip installed and then be able to suddenly speak 37 languages fluently. Or have another chip installed and remove grandma’s gall bladder in the morning before you go argue before the Supreme Court in the afternoon and then come home and rebuild the engine in your car before helping your kids with their quantum physics homework.

OK, so it is not up and running yet, but let’s say in the future, you could have a chip attached to your skull that would allow you to have instant intelligence - would you want it?

2

Or maybe a chip to learn how to spell “develop”!

3

…I know Kung Fu!

4

Is this a trick question?? I’ve been waiting for this for as long as I can remember! I also want as many cybernetic limbs as possible, and eyes like the Terminator.

I’m not kidding, this would absolutely, positively, be the coolest thing EVER.

5

Indeed.

6

I know that this isn’t aimed towards the having 37 languages or anything like that that DMARK mentioned. However, if that does become a possibility, I don’t want it to be used! It’s just not right that someone can have all this knowledge just given to them. Let them work and study to gain it. It’s not fair that those who study and toil at these things can instantly be supplanted by those who have a chip.

7

Are you sure about that monica? The same could be said about almost any technological advancement in the history of mankind. Sure it would feel like cheating, but it would also open up new challenges.

8

AzaelCould these challenges include wet-ware hacking? Yippy! Now I can live out my cyber-punk fantasies! :wink:

9

Its great I’d love one. Could you imagine how fast and far we would progress if all of a sudden at the age of ten you gain the knowledge of a person with a lifetime of experience and education? Instead of spending hours daily at school learning and re-learning you would be off writing equations and confirming theories. Instead of only the highly educated being able to conduct experiments everyone would be. A greater understanding of things would hopefully stamp out ignorance.
Plus, it’d be really f’in cool.

10

Or maybe not, Wearia:

Originally posted by X~Slayer(ALE)

I can imagine the first real life typical user/consumer follow up comment to that:

Neat!! What a cool TV show from the last century! I think I will download the second season to this space in my left cortex!!!..…

Doh! There goes the 20th season of the Simpsons. . .

Still, as Azael mentions, I can live with that challenge. :slight_smile:

11

I don’t think it’ll work like that. Knowledge is more than just information. You have to process the information and make sense of it before it becomes your knowledge. And if it’s just extra information you want, it’s much easier to use an external storage system, i.e. books and computers.

12

Even if it was a kind of uberdictionary you gotta admit it’d be DAMN useful.

13

Yes, I would take that chip in a heartbeat! I’m wondering if it should be mandatory so that our educational system could be dismantled.

Maybe employers could offer it to prospective employees.

Employer: “Have any experience work with technical counter-arbitration responders? No? You can have the job if you will accept the chip.”

At this point the applicant agrees and heads home to celebrate both her first job and her sixth birthday.

14

Hell yes i would take one in a heartbeat. Sadly, it will probably be 20 years before it is that advanced, and even then doctors probably won’t use them for non-medical reasons.

15

<cynical>
Nahhh. You speak 37 languages fluently? Then you know what person A is saying about you behind your back 24/7, or you have spend a good extra 30 seconds trying to remember what to say to this person (what does he speak again?).

oh please, won’t someone think of the migraines :wink:

Suddenly everyone wants you, because you can speak 37 different languages. You get quartered at high noon because you didn’t respond to fan mail A, or postcard F, or – heaven forbid :eek: - you forget to turn in your report at work for Advanced Communications on how to conjugate kiss your bosses arse in 13 different languages. Although, I suppose, if you knew 37 languages, you’d have a lot of people kissin’ your arse too! And what about the hatemail you get from the people who feel offended you didn’t choose their language?

Just imagine Disney World:
“You must be 3 feet to ride the Small World ride. Also, you must be able to speak French, Spanish, German, Austrian, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Japan, and Chinese, so that you may be able to communicate properly with the robots.”

Or, FOX:

I just quise per dire cela sie verfingen sich den Dieb at 6:31pm, at the estadio en la calle de Smithen: why would they have to speak in the same language for an entire sentence? Gotta make it interesting, folks!

Or, as a young student:
Bobby, you’re not allowed to go outside and play until you conjugated all of your verbs into these 7 languages, and then used all of them in example sentences, all languages must be represented in each example!

Or, on the straightdope:
Help! I need an answer for my homework!
Can anyone tell me how to properly translate Cecil Adam’s column from English, to Spanish for the odd numbered sentence, French for the even, all verbs in Swedish, and then back into English?
I need this in 57 minutes! Please hurry!

Or what if you felt left out because you had a horrible brain problem didn’t allow you to have them? or worst yet, what if you had one, and it got damaged, and you couldn’t get another one…ever? You’d kill yourself because of your stupidity…

</cynical>

and the worst:
if you were super intelligent, why would you need the SDMB? :eek:

/Shadez

16

I’d like a math coprocessor, for one thing. You know, just to have it. And it would be handy to be able to make direct backup copies of my memory.

I’d for damn sure want a rock-solid pop-up stopper, though. You think ads are intrusive now, hoo boy. You just wait for ads that use direct neural hookups.

17

The technology could go against us. What if we had a league of super-intelligent criminals on the loose? Then again, we’d have a super-intelligent police force after them. Still, I think it’d be really neat to live in an uber-utopia where everyone is super-intelligent and technology progresses at an amazing rate.

18

As a small nitpick, knowing all of Kung fu wouldn’t impart the skill necessary to utilize it. Most of that is purely a purely body brain connection and can only be perfected by practice. Knowing how to puch isn’t the same as being able to punch well. Or kick for that matter.

I personally would love these chips. I would even settle for a chip that just enchanced my memory. Languages not included but capable of storing 3 terabytes of information or some such. It would still be necessary to learn, but what you learned would be acessed with computer quality memory.

There is so much I want to learn, yet cannot because of my mental capabilities. Should a handicapp person not be able to walk because it would be cheating to give him fake legs?

19

If everybody could speak 37 languages, then why would we need so many?

The thing is that we still need people to produce these chips. There will still be room for creativity and intelligence.

20

Mmm…brain chips. Salty…