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Imagine if you could record your memories and play them back to yourself or others. Consider having an entire generation of family memories accessible to those

Imagine if you could record your memories and play them back to yourself or others. Consider having an entire generation of family memories accessible to those who have dementia/alzheimer's. This technology will be life changing, consumer applications aside.

Pfhreak 5y ago
For any new technology it is important to ask, who will have access and how will we treat those without access. Sometimes new tech enriches all our lives, nearly everyone benefits from renewable energy for instance. In other cases you risk furthering the divide between haves and have nots. When a person experiencing homelessness has their neural device go bad, how do we ensure they aren't just left in the street suffering? Are we comfortable living in a world where the elderly are permitted to suffer from Alzheimer's when we have a cure like you describe, just because they were too poor to afford treatment? Secondly, it is important to ask, how could the technology be used if greed or maliciousness are the main motivators. Do those downsides outweigh the positives? I'm moderately bullish on brain computer interfaces, but I caution or challenge people to put on their engineering hats and really think deeply about both the positives and negatives of new technology.
- rdedev 5y ago
  Isn't it already happening now ? Many people simply don't go to the doctor because of the associated costs. But this dosent mean we shouldnt do research into curing diseases. A better solution to the scenario you provided above would be a nationalised healthcare system, or atleast something close to it where people can get a basic amount of care without having to think about money
  - Pfhreak 5y ago
    Yes, it's exactly what's happening now. It's extremely what's happening now. If you don't take deliberate acts in addressing your assumptions about access when thinking about the future, you'll end up in the same place as now. I'm saying looking at the current model and asking yourself, "Is this really the right model?" is a key part of building something new.
kumarvvr 5y ago
Now imagine a state implanting false memories in witnesses to trap political inconveniences.
ironmagma 5y ago
You already can, it’s called a camera. There’s nothing stopping someone from getting a camera implanted in their head, or even just wearing a Google Glass or something like it.
PostOnce 5y ago
And what of the court-ordered memory extraction by invasive brain surgery? Perhaps not even of alleged perpetrators, but of bystanders. It sounds far-fetched, but we've done worse. The choices we make today dictate the future we live in tomorrow.
- actinium226 5y ago
  Is it really that different from court-ordered email dumps? FBI raids taking people's computers? Before email and the widespread use of computers these things weren't done, but I don't hear anybody saying we should go back to "the good old days" before computers and email because at least then we wouldn't have all this invasive government snooping.
  - PostOnce 5y ago
    Email dumps don't involve literal brain surgery with the risk of death. Also, unlike emails, memories are fuzzy, subject to change, and to being dreamt up, drug induced, or all manner of other things we probably aren't ready to cope with, given all the other ethical problems we have in our justice system.
Daniel_sk 5y ago
You are really simplifying at how memories or the brain works - we (IT workers) tend to think of memories as just some information that can be written down, stored and replayed. But the mechanism is much more different. You would need the specific brain to make any sense of it. You can't just upload some memories to a different brain for playback - these memories need to be formed in a long and slow process, same like you can't just upload some muscle mass to your body with a device. The same goes for retrieving memories, you can't just ask the brain to dump all the memories into a device. These memories would need to be "relived" (retrieved) by the brain at normal speed and this would be a tedious process. Unless we could do a scan of the whole brain at a single time and scan every single state of a cell (and then also build an interpreter device). There is a lot of biology behind memories and interaction with the whole body and chemistry to make it work. You can't rip memories out of the body because they are part of the whole system and they don't make sense outside of it.
sarsway 5y ago
you're supposed to let go of the past, not endlessly replay it in some in some nostalgic fever dream...
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  You can let go and still like to look at it? Otherwise would you say the same thing about cameras?
  - sarsway 5y ago
    well since you asked, yes never been a fan of keeping much pictures or memories from the distant past. It's about living in the present, those moments are gone, you already experienced them, no reason to cling to it, just let it go, forever. We'll be all dead soon anyway and none of your childhood memories will matter in the slightest, circling around the past only burdens you unnecessarily. You'd be better off to just always look forward and never look back.
    - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
      I like having a window into the distant past because it's interesting. I don't see how that could be a bad thing. Sure, we should live in the present, but doing so isn't necessarily at odds with looking back. In fact, even if you're focusing on looking forward, you still need to consider the past and learn from it.
sidcool 5y ago
I just hope they don't insert ads in the memories of my daughter and my wife playing. /s

Pfhreak 5y ago

For any new technology it is important to ask, who will have access and how will we treat those without access. Sometimes new tech enriches all our lives, nearly everyone benefits from renewable energy for instance. In other cases you risk furthering the divide between haves and have nots. When a person experiencing homelessness has their neural device go bad, how do we ensure they aren't just left in the street suffering? Are we comfortable living in a world where the elderly are permitted to suffer from Alzheimer's when we have a cure like you describe, just because they were too poor to afford treatment? Secondly, it is important to ask, how could the technology be used if greed or maliciousness are the main motivators. Do those downsides outweigh the positives? I'm moderately bullish on brain computer interfaces, but I caution or challenge people to put on their engineering hats and really think deeply about both the positives and negatives of new technology.

rdedev 5y ago
Isn't it already happening now ? Many people simply don't go to the doctor because of the associated costs. But this dosent mean we shouldnt do research into curing diseases. A better solution to the scenario you provided above would be a nationalised healthcare system, or atleast something close to it where people can get a basic amount of care without having to think about money
- Pfhreak 5y ago
  Yes, it's exactly what's happening now. It's extremely what's happening now. If you don't take deliberate acts in addressing your assumptions about access when thinking about the future, you'll end up in the same place as now. I'm saying looking at the current model and asking yourself, "Is this really the right model?" is a key part of building something new.

kumarvvr 5y ago

Now imagine a state implanting false memories in witnesses to trap political inconveniences.

ironmagma 5y ago

You already can, it’s called a camera. There’s nothing stopping someone from getting a camera implanted in their head, or even just wearing a Google Glass or something like it.

PostOnce 5y ago

And what of the court-ordered memory extraction by invasive brain surgery? Perhaps not even of alleged perpetrators, but of bystanders. It sounds far-fetched, but we've done worse. The choices we make today dictate the future we live in tomorrow.

actinium226 5y ago
Is it really that different from court-ordered email dumps? FBI raids taking people's computers? Before email and the widespread use of computers these things weren't done, but I don't hear anybody saying we should go back to "the good old days" before computers and email because at least then we wouldn't have all this invasive government snooping.
- PostOnce 5y ago
  Email dumps don't involve literal brain surgery with the risk of death. Also, unlike emails, memories are fuzzy, subject to change, and to being dreamt up, drug induced, or all manner of other things we probably aren't ready to cope with, given all the other ethical problems we have in our justice system.

Daniel_sk 5y ago

You are really simplifying at how memories or the brain works - we (IT workers) tend to think of memories as just some information that can be written down, stored and replayed. But the mechanism is much more different. You would need the specific brain to make any sense of it. You can't just upload some memories to a different brain for playback - these memories need to be formed in a long and slow process, same like you can't just upload some muscle mass to your body with a device. The same goes for retrieving memories, you can't just ask the brain to dump all the memories into a device. These memories would need to be "relived" (retrieved) by the brain at normal speed and this would be a tedious process. Unless we could do a scan of the whole brain at a single time and scan every single state of a cell (and then also build an interpreter device). There is a lot of biology behind memories and interaction with the whole body and chemistry to make it work. You can't rip memories out of the body because they are part of the whole system and they don't make sense outside of it.

sarsway 5y ago

you're supposed to let go of the past, not endlessly replay it in some in some nostalgic fever dream...

read_if_gay_ 5y ago
You can let go and still like to look at it? Otherwise would you say the same thing about cameras?
- sarsway 5y ago
  well since you asked, yes never been a fan of keeping much pictures or memories from the distant past. It's about living in the present, those moments are gone, you already experienced them, no reason to cling to it, just let it go, forever. We'll be all dead soon anyway and none of your childhood memories will matter in the slightest, circling around the past only burdens you unnecessarily. You'd be better off to just always look forward and never look back.
  - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    I like having a window into the distant past because it's interesting. I don't see how that could be a bad thing. Sure, we should live in the present, but doing so isn't necessarily at odds with looking back. In fact, even if you're focusing on looking forward, you still need to consider the past and learn from it.

sidcool 5y ago

I just hope they don't insert ads in the memories of my daughter and my wife playing. /s