Cyberbrains

Humans in the Future: Cyberbrains

From as long back as we can imagine, we humans have striven for immortality. Now that in our rough and ready way, we've begun to approach it, we face the problem of what to do with the vast amount of information we carry. Even if the brain allowed such storage capacity, who would want to be burdened by quantities of redundant, interfering memories? Painful and messy ones?

Therefore as regeneration techniques advanced to allow the body to last longer, mind renewal grew alongside. The term is colloquial and inaccurate, of course - what is a mind, after all? No matter, as someone quipped. In fact, it's selected portions of long-term memory that we renew. New memories in new bodies. New lives.

In an indeterminate future, as the prospect of human immortality nears, a new problem must be confronted by our civilization: rejuvenated bodies will require rejuvenated identities. In this process, all traces of a person's past will be erased and a new, complete, and idyllic fiction will be implanted in the mind. Occasionally, however, cracks will appear on this carapace of perfect memories, and reminders of discarded lives will crawl out and begin to take control. This condition will be termed something like the leaked memory syndrome, which will be able to pull its victims into an internal abyss of terrible mental suffering.

Leaked memory syndrome will be a malady of the human condition in its present historic phase. Reminders of our discarded lives will not be completely blocked, but we can expect their intrusions into our conscious minds to diminuish as our understanding of thought-complexes will increase and our ability to control them will improve.

Jun Kaneko, Untitled, 2002. Glazed Ceramic, Galvanized Steel. Artwork in front of the Gardiner Museum. Photo by Elena.

In our bid to outrace age and defy death, we will leap from one life into another, be it imperfectly and hope fervently - in the manner of acknowledges sinners - that the past does not catch up with us. But sometimes it will. We will create records, before our lives, everything, whatever scraps were retrievable were vanished into that nothing of electromagnetic noise.

Chemicals will alleviate the condition, but often they will be blunt, their effects diffuse, with collateral outcomes to negotiate. Stubborn cases will require the more intrusive ministrations and shock tactics of a surgical team.

Even our advanced cyberbrains will not be able to reproduce the whimsy of a huan mind, the sheer irrationality or spontaneity of a passing thought. But that will depend on how you define your terms. Is there anything irrational inside a larger, a universal reality in which everything is connected to everything else? In such a space nothing is spontaneous, everything has a cause – a leaf dropping; a shooting star in the sky; a spark from an ember on a barbecue grill.

The mind does not have a whim. Or does it? Should we give up this solitary occupation of our sleepless nights? More than that, it satisfied a compulsion: to let the mind roam freely – to escape and imagine, create narratives, possibilities. Would they have a true value? Not in the obvious sense, but surely the imagination has an organic power of its own, to see truth?  And therefore to bridge gaps in our knowledge and weave past mendacities to create alternative and truer stories? Let the mind roam freely and find your truth. If I were a musician I would have created music; music is safer. But our poison were words, not notes and bars. It was always will be words.