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Nicholas Negroponte: Nanobots in Your Brain Could Be the Future of Learning
Nicholas Negroponte doesn't like to make predictions about the future; he prefers extrapolations based on research. But if pushed to make a guess about future innovation,Negroponte says that biotechnology will be like digital was 20 years ago. In this clip, he imagines a future in which information and knowledge can be delivered to the brain via tiny robots in your bloodstream.
Nicholas Negroponte: I gave a talk at the first TED in 1984 that was two hours long and it had five predictions in it that more or less all came true. And people called them predictions but they really weren’t predictions. They were extrapolations. The reason I talked for two hours is not because I was Fidel Castro and I was giving a rally. It’s because I had 15 years of research stored up and was about to open the media lab and it was real easy to talk about what we were gonna do and some of it even seemed old hat even though in retrospect people thought, oh, this is amazingly predictive. 30 years later, they say make a prediction as if I had made predictions the first time which I hadn’t. So this year I actually did make a prediction and it is in the prediction category in the sense that it’s not an extrapolation of work I’ve been doing for 15 years. But it’s part of work that some of my colleagues have started at the media lab which is really looking at the brain. Not just mapping the brain but how do you interact with the brain pretty directly. And almost everybody who’s done that has done it from the outside, you know, with sticking pins and needles or, you know, EEG or MEG or other ways. And the key to my prediction is the best way to interact with the brain is from the inside, from the bloodstream.
Because if you inject tiny robots into the bloodstream they can get very close to all the cells and nerves and things in your brain, really close. So if you want to input information or read information, you do it through the bloodstream. So by extension – and this is, you know, why it’s a prediction because it’s by extension, you could in theory load Shakespeare into your bloodstream and as the little robots get to the various parts of the brain they deposit little pieces of Shakespeare or little pieces of French if you want to learn how to speak French. So in theory you can ingest information and that was my prediction. I won’t be around to see whether it’s true but, you know, like many of these predictions it doesn’t have to be true as long as it gets people thinking. And there are people thinking about this and looking at it quite seriously. And I think it’s an area in sort of synthetic biology and sort of the interface between biology and silicon that is really what the future’s about. The digital world today is like plastics were 25 years ago. It’s an important field but kind of over. Digital world is like plastics and the biotech world is the next phase.
Source: http://bigthink.com/videos/nicholas-negroponte-on-the-future-of-biotech
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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