Your Brain in a Box

Recently researchers at IBM have come up with a computing system with chipset architecture modeled after the human brain. Each chipset can act independently while still communicating with each other. The SyNAPSE Project began in 2008 and its end goal is to build a brain in a box.

While still a ways off from their goal of ten billion neurons and a hundred trillion synapses, the current model introduced in 2011 has chipsets of 256 neurons(CPUs) and axons for communications, connected to 65,536 synapses.

Led by Dr, Dharmendra S. Modha the project’s goal is to create brain like computers to complement current systems. For more information, check out Sara Gates’s article on the Huffinghton Post here.

 

While this may still be years off this marks the beginning of technology which has the potential to extend our lives past the expiration date of our bodies.

While this concept has been explored in fiction and nonfiction has anyone stopped to ask, not if you should do it when the technology becomes available, but why? Think about this, sure this could provide new lives to those with terminal illnesses or who suffer from limited mobility. But what about the person seeking immortality?

Would you really want to live forever and see the world as you knew it disappear? Think of how many things have changed between the time you were a child and today. Now multiple that by several thousands.

Even if you could adjust to the changes what would you do? As a kid do you remember being utterly bored during summer vacation? Now imagine those three months being three centuries.

It would be an endless quest to find something to fill up all that time. Sure it sounds fun at first, until you realize there is a finite number of things to do. Honestly, how many trips can you go on or movies can you watch before you get sick of it all?

But here’s the other issue: how are you going pay for everything? Even without taking inflation into the equation, you’ll spend millions on food and housing alone. Not to mention the costs to maintain and upgrade your shiny brain and the casing that goes with it.

There are other issues to consider before plopping your brain into a machine. The planet is already over population as it is. Would you want to live on it two or three hundred years from now when people are fighting over rights to resources like fresh water and food? And what about climate change? With the ice caps completely gone and levels risen several feet would the world be worth living in it?

This brings the most important issue to the front. The assumption humans will be around for another century or two. Given the current state of affairs it’s easy to imagine a not too distant future where the world has been destroyed either by a nuclear conflict or chemical/biological warfare.

Imagine you get this procedure, get bored and put your brain on ice for a few decades. When you wake up the shit has hit the fan and you’re stuck in this crap shack world.

The need to carry on after we’ve died isn’t just a biological imperative imbued in us by evolution. It’s a product of our collective narcissism. That we deem ourselves so important to the gene pool we must procreate and bring another person into this world, is the height of arrogance.

The legacy we leave behind need not be genetic. It’s the words we’ve spoken to those who remain when we’re gone. It’s in the actions we’ve taken in this life and the lives we’ve affected while here. So if you want to live forever than create something that touches the lives of others and makes them feel important; that they’re not alone and that they matter.