Cyborgs Will Damage their Brains & Live to Tell About It
Article: Brain prosthesis passes live tissue test | New Scientist:
"The world’s first brain prosthesis has passed the first stages of live testing.
The microchip, designed to model a part of the brain called the hippocampus, has been used successfully to replace a neural circuit in slices of rat brain tissue kept alive in a dish. The prosthesis will soon be ready for testing in animals.
The device could ultimately be used to replace damaged brain tissue which may have been destroyed in an accident, during a stroke, or by neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. It is the first attempt to replace central brain regions dealing with cognitive functions such as learning or speech."
posted by Allison Muri at 3:42 PM
2 Comments:
Seriously, imagine what you could do with some hard-drive space in your brain and a little firewire port to download new content. All the rules would have to be changed... how would you know if what knew was really knowledge or if it was just RAM? If you had the space you could "know" all kinds of data. Actually, now that I think about it, the hard-drive on my computer is pretty disorganized...
"Frankenstein? No, I don't know anything about that. I just emptied the Trash to free up some space for the Bible. But I could recite some Margaret Atwood if you'd like."
"how would you know if what knew was really knowledge or if it was just RAM?"
...but then again, what's the difference between knowledge and memory...isn't knowledge an application of memory? Is there any difference if it's "artificial" or "natural" memory?
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