Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Things that erupt from my brain under a hot shower

The Scientist pauses, his index finger a centimetre above the left mouse button, hovering, quivering.

"Have you made all extrapolations that your discoveries will bring to our reality, dear friend?" An imposing voice reverberates over his head, its origin his confidante since childhood.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and edges his head backwards, neck muscles relaxing for an instant. His mind trails away under his mentat training as he fully empowers his concentration to this oddly procrastinated task. His programming lunges forward.

With his success in finally bridging completely and effortlessly the brain and the computing world through his cybernetic interface, within moments, the human race would be enthralled. Every person, already addicted to the ever constant contact of one another through the net would embrace his technology, essentially creating a cyborg of everyone who could afford the procedure. The economies of scale would allow every nation to partake on this revolutionary step.

Immediate internet connections could be made just by thinking about it. Networks would bounce from person to person, everyone connecting his immediate neighbour through a hyperspace of the cerebrum. Nodal ethernets and advanced IP addressing allowing a species wide network floating on the energies of its users. Each person with their own small social nets, updating each other on the slightest details of their lives Twitter style, with immediate visual inputs and opinions. A sort of telepathy or empathy of the highest order amongst friends and family, and even strangers for those open enough. Privacy would slowly be a thing of the past as each person's interface slowly amalgamates into a giant consciousness. Nobody could be separate from this as hackers, much like mind readers of lore, break into every firewall and spew forth all the dark inhibitions and secrets.

Soon, the decadent would cease to live their own lives, and instead fully live off the more productive members of the world society. The intelligentsia realising this would separate them, and social classes emerge again. Scientific advancement accelerate at a pace never seen before as red tape and laws are circumvented around national divides. Hive minds and new alliances create magnificent discoveries and illuminates the human race like a never plateauing Renaissance.

Crime would disappear as criminals are caught at the slightest hint of want to harm others. Tolerance levels are raised as ignorance dissipates through sheer diffusion of all behaviours, customs and religions. The thirst for all information fall over those with the desire. Minority Report-esque objections go to the byline as near zero crime rates are observed in totalitarian governments.

People soon learn to use the other 90% of their brains as they start designing robotic clones to enact their own actions, living multiple lives and increasing productivity 10-fold. Partitioning of their own brains to control each clone. Autistic Savants emerge to the fore, managing more simply with their higher capacities to multitask along with unbreakable concentrations. A lifetime soon seems meaningless when you can do so much more with the extended life that medical science already provides.

A Morlock mentality begins amongst those useless to the now single global society and hive mind. Behavioural economic experiments are played upon these now almost unknowing masses by the intellectually curious, bringing about greater understandings of human nature, as warped as it has become. In time, in the face of such great advances in all channels of thought and discovery, the Earth would become the epicentre of a galaxy wide expansion, the distances between the stars bringing about delays in communication that illicits memories of a very distant past known to us as the present.

The Scientist opens his eyes, tearing. He clicks the mouse button and uploads his thesis. And with that click, individuality dies, and the world changes.