Sci-fi inspired neural lace firm launched by agent of the future, Elon Musk.
Motivational literature and easy-access apps make the road to self-improvement heavily trodden and muddied.
However, humanity’s primal need to survive appears to drive the success of these aforementioned legions of experts. The reason for this trend could be that historically, we’ve had to beat environmental anomalies that threatened our existence.
Nevertheless, those same anomalies ultimately served to diversify our gene pool to heighten our defenses against any other potentially risky scenarios.
In contemporary times, we strive for professional and personal growth in our ancestral motivation of battling our immediate surroundings.
As such, humans are on the evolutionary brink once again in the digital landscape of the concrete jungle.
This time however, Mother Nature can’t take credit for the recent jump in our cognitive capabilities.
Neural lace to make your head turn
Tech prophet and automotive guru Elon Musk recently announced the launch of his start-up and medical research firm, Neuralink.
Through the venture, Musk and his associates aim to develop and market devices that will be implanted in the brain in order to enhance its power.
Ostensibly, the technologies will push humankind’s intellectual prowess. However, they could also protect the world against the apocalyptic threat of an AI take-over. Both Musk and Stephen Hawking believe that this possibility could happen in the not too distant future.
Most popular and hot on everyone’s social media feed is the emergence of a brain-computer interface that would create a type of digital biology. Enthusiasts and sceptics commonly refer to this possible innovation as neural lace, a technology inspired by science fiction author Iain M. Banks.
An implant that would drastically elevate cognition, the premise of neural lace is founded upon human-to-computer communication without a third party interface.
Should he succeed, Musk’s efforts to upgrade humanity to digital heights could redefine our perception of reality. Met with our digital selves, concepts that currently define the human condition could become obsolete.
With enhanced processing powers, perhaps we’d be able to think non-sequentially. In this kind of scenario, the way that we interact with time would make our linear understanding of it obsolete.
At present, Musk hasn’t publicly established Neuralink, which continues to flirt with the imagination.
Furthermore, it joins the ranks of other start-ups with similar futuristic goals.
Kernel, established by Braintree co-founder Bryan Johnson, is also searching for a way create a digital operating system for the brain.
Lastly, developments in neural lace to establish cognitive-digital interfaces could represent the growing emergence of disruptive evolution.