Chip In Head, Please.

A blog post from 2013:

I’ve been waiting for years to go to a grey-market Seoul clinic and get the chip put in my head. Nothing anyone says about people hacking it, boot-up problems, need for regular upgrades, etc., has ever reduced my desire to be an early adopter of this controversial technology.

It’s not that I want to be a cyborg, although growing up hearing the exultant words “Better…stronger…faster” gave me a sense of wonder and hope about biomechanical developments.

I’m just ready for an upgrade. I forget where I left my car practically every day, and while technology for finding it with external devices is advancing daily, I don’t want to have to bother with that business. I need an onboard memory prosthesis, a zoom camera eyeball, an annotated life, and a GPS HUD (for indoors too, great for navigating museums- Google already offers it for external devices).

New precision devices like a 3-D optogenetics implant, recent leaps in brain-controlled interface technology, brain pacemakers and the race for the wallets of the world’s 285 million visually impaired or blind people mean that medical use of brain implants is actually becoming a thing. That’s wonderful, but I want a dilettante chip, a convenience chip, a chip for the quotidian, and I want to use it in the shower, unlike Google Glasses.

What about carriers?

To make the commitment to get the technology implanted, I would have to be certain that I would not incur any “mind wandering” fees or “mental overage” charges, not to mention being throttled if we think too much. Who would you trust as the service provider for your own head?

From www.talkandroid.com

What will getting a chip involve?

you may be surprised to learn that the installation of a neural implant is relatively simple and fast. Under anesthesia, an incision is made in the scalp, a hole is drilled in the skull, and the device is placed on the surface of the brain. Diagnostic communication with the device can take place wirelessly. When it is not an outpatient procedure, patients typically require only an overnight stay at the hospital.

From online.wsj.com

Doesn’t sound too bad. But there are barriers to the development of “invasive” (internal) iBMI, electronic Brain-Machine Interfaces.

Impediments to iBMI advances for neuroprosthetics, or even real-time imaging of neuronal-synaptic activity, are largely twofold. The first impediment is designing an implant that will provide high quality signal but that is robust against scar-tissue buildup…

From www.eidolonspeak.com

Alright, what about non-invasive iBMIs? How soon will I be able to get this technology in some form? Google Glass, the first step, will probably be released in 2014. The first “Glass Foundry” Glass hackathon is today, here in San Francisco.

I hope for good things from Google Glass. Meanwhile, although I know some Transhumanist folks, I’m not waiting for the Singularity.

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