Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!apple!sun-barr!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: bfu@ifi.uio.no (Thomas Gramstad) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Brain as Database Message-ID: Date: 21 Mar 90 04:25:49 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 39 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu >From: hcobb@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Henry J. Cobb) >Date: 15 Mar 90 21:39:39 GMT > I can think of hundreds of ways to be "smarter than I am"--some of > them are embarrassing since they show just how limited the human mind > really is: ... > If you stop to think just how much the power of our minds can > be extended by the utterly primitive agency of pencil and paper, > you'll realize just how wretched our native symbolic-level > processing really is. > --JoSH] At the top of my head I can imagine at least three ways of brain enhancement, and they don't even require nanotechnology (though of course they would benefit from it): 1. "Reversible synergism" with a computer (see e g Poul Anderson's _Avatar_). 2. Physical connection of the brain with a "crystal memory" inserted into it by microsurgery 3. Organic computers ------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Gramstad bfu@ifi.uio.no ------------------------------------------------------------------- [Quite frankly, I believe that we will have nanotechnology *before* we understand the brain well enough to do many of the interesting sorts of enhancements we've been talking about recently. --JoSH]