A New Superhero?!

Today I found out some very interesting information...

Little did I, or the rest of the Thoughtlab team know that our boss Mike, was a superhero...

Intel Core Duo Processing and Your Memories

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While driving to work this morning, I listened to an interesting story about “The Bionic Brain”. First in a rat, now Intel is trying to have a brain implant on the consumer market by 2020.

What I’m talking about is a brain microchip- like the one in your phone or computer- that would help memory function.

This technology is crazy and it really makes me wonder about the consequences of what might happen when people start “upgrading” their brains in mass. Would it be illegal to be a professional athlete if you could better retain training regimens or strategy? What about how having more memory would affect getting a job or getting into college?

If this becomes a popular science and people start using it in their everyday life, doesn’t that make even more of a gap between those who already get ahead in life by being in a higher socio-economic class from those who are poor?

While the main focus of this science is to help aid in the recovery of traumatic brain injuries, and people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s, it really makes me consider what comes next.

I know I could personally benefit from having a chip that pulls power away from my Limbic system so that I can be more in control over my emotional response to things. But how much control would you really have over something like this? And in recent years hasn’t the world seen an increase in technologies failures that result in bigger and more devastating disasters (think nuclear plants in Japan)?

What happens in your brain if this chip fails? Or what happens if it starts recording the “wrong memories”. We’ve all had those weird, frightening, strange dreams that leave us in a state of confusion and haze the next morning (also known as a dream hangover) that sometimes stay with us for hours. I sure as hell don’t want those memories being recorded by a chip and replayed by some random trigger that I come across as I go through day to day life. I’ll speak from personal experience for a minute, I’ve had close calls on the race track, and some have had horrifying accidents. It already takes even the best driver at least a lap or two to get back to where they were before the incident. Think of how hard it would be if your brain chip remembered it. I see many “pro driver” types running around asking to be saved by Jewish God and Oprah Winifred.

Oh and for all those professional criminals out there, wouldn’t it suck if the police could use a mini-sd cable, plug it into your ear and have all the dirty details about the “supposed” disappearance of a large sum of money from said bank.

Think about it…

A dream

I have heard about this happening to other people as well, but when its a full moon, I start having very strange dreams. While mine are always vivid and clear, my "werewolf" dreams are just eerie.

Here's an example:

When her eyes opened she was looking down a street, Italy, she was sure, though nothing conventional told her she was right. Everything was a variation of gray, like twilight, some more blue, some more black, like looking out at the ocean after the sunsets and the color from the sky is gone. The street rolled downward, and each plateau in between was highlighted in a beautiful glow, light yellows like sun through clouds. At the bottom, the statue of David, surely larger than in reality, was dead center and easily seen although it must have been hundreds of yards away.  She turned to look down the other streets around her. Some ended at small cafes, others at landmarks she was sure were real, but were of course only important in her imagination. She couldn’t fathom how she was here, but she was happy, the deep happy, the kind that fills every cell in your body. She could feel it in her arms and her toes, in her lips and her words were almost sing songy, she couldn’t express how much pleasure she was in to be in this place.

Things slowly started to change, her group of friends wanted to walk to the statue of David but she was lost. Not in a scary way, just that her surroundings had changed around her, and to get her bearings she spun in the square they were standing in. There was a strange character appearing, a clown, a mime, a skeleton. An interesting internal struggle between a quintessential European street performer and something haunting her conscious. He was tall and skinny; you could see the outline of bones in his fingers. She told her friends to leave. She wasn’t afraid, she was curious. She knew the character her mind had created to challenge her wasn’t malicious, but he was uncomfortable. She looked at him as he looked at her and she lay down on the cobble stone street. He came towards her, he had a cool presence, but she wasn’t bothered by it. She told him to take her, and she wasn’t sure in what sense she meant it. He picked her up in his long spindly arms and carried her up stairs inside a small house that had now made itself the setting in which she found herself. The man asked her where she wanted to go, far away was her reply, and as they approached a small low ceiling bedroom, in foggy colors and soft fabrics, the skeletal appearance he had started to fade and she knew without making any realizations that he was a character indeed and this wasn’t what he really was. She remembered them kissing, seeing his eyes clearly above her and this time they were bright. She couldn’t place the familiarity they had but in a sense they were comforting. However as in real life, comfort seemed to bore her and she grew tired of being in the bedroom and leapt out the window.

She wasn’t falling; she wasn’t flying, just floating with great speed. She didn’t really know where she was going but appeared back in the same square she was in originally but this time it was a library. She knew she was in a college, specifically one that studied the human body. She also knew she was far from home in a place similar to Europe, but of course this was somewhere in her mind and couldn’t be pointed to on a map. She walked through the rows of books in the open air library, reveling in the beauty of it all and telling herself if she was in a place like this, she would succeed. That was her excuse; a change of scenery would replace all the shortcomings she has. As she continued to walk through the students she knew she was out of place and sure her wide eyes and open mouth made her look like a naïve child wandering through F A O Schwartz for the first time. She came to a group of students she knew were her age, sitting on old stone benches shaped like an outdoor amphitheater at a much smaller scale. She heard their voices and recognized them as American like she was. She didn’t remember the conversation, for what was being said wasn’t important. But as she was talking once again the scenery changed. Now she was in the same place however the book shelves were replaced by what looked like museum exhibit tables covered in strange pieces of jewelry covered in diamonds and gems. She was back with her friends as they touched each piece of metal and rolled it through their fingers, pocketing pieces that were particularly exquisite to each individuals taste. She questioned herself taking these pieces, but there was no guilt, there was no moral compass telling her she was doing the wrong thing, so she continued. In the low light of dusk, but a dream dusk, the small diamonds in one of the bronze bracelets, shaped like a snake but fluid and long, gleamed.

There was a lapse of time, of course unaccounted for, that passed and she was now weary of the sense of fear. But in an annoyed way, not in a guttural way that made he want to act. She felt sharp pain in her hand and as bear, dog, animal was biting her hand. It seemed to be biting her in play, but there was the smallest inkling that he meant to harm her. She pulled her hand away noting to herself that for the pressure and damage the bite was surely causing, she was in little pain, more of a discomfort. She freed her hand and pulled it away, noticing she was missing two fingers. There were small drops of blood but nothing that frightened her.  She remembered the pieces of metal and gems she had placed in her pockets and pulled them out. They seemed to distract the animal enough for her to walk away.