Nicholas Negroponte: Nanobots in Your Brain Could Be the Future of Learning

[RKP5637]

MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte predicts that we might learn by injecting nanobots into the bloodstream, altering the brain at the level of the neuron.

[Hydra]

1. Predicted, and still a true Pandora's Box

You could directly interface with data structures this way...or you could rewrite someone's brain against their will, making them into a completely different person.

The possibilities for miracles and abuses are staggering.

[yuiyoshida]

2. my thoughts exactly..

If you can learn a language this why, which will alter your perception why can't you control a person, with altering his or her perception. I am sure there are examples of this in Science fiction, just can't think of any at the moment.

Maybe "Dagger of the Mind"...from the original Star Trek.

[RKP5637]

4. It's concerning, the possibilities are real, the possibilities for miracles and abuses are

staggering.

[rwsanders]

5. There are worse things that are even closer...

I was reading in Discover Magazine (they often detail DARPA and other projects in a "gee whiz" way, even if they have profound implications) that there is a scientist who has introduced light sensitive proteins into a mouse brain and altered behavior at will with a light.
So shortly anyone needing "behavioral modification" could be infected and their personhood permenantly and fundamentally altered at the whim of someone else. It was touted in the article as hope for the mentally ill, but it doesn't take much to imagine the implications in the hands of those running Gitmo.

[Helen Borg]

3. Lots of smoke out of MIT Media Lab .

Having been around there for a while, I know there is not much beyond that. Cool demos, is what they do. Just saying...