An orgy of minds...

[^_^ 5,021]

In his new book World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machine, and the Internet, Michael Chorost has a fascinating chapter called “The Most Intimate Interface” in which he argues that true intimacy would be far more profound if we were all connected to each other by the Internet. He describes two technologies currently being researched which could link us directly to an Internet (i) via nanowires embedded in every single capillary in our brain which would detect and respond to neural firings; (ii) via light sources that would control genetically altered neurons and thus connect us “wirelessly” to each other.

“If you connected one person’s wired brain to another person’s, you could literally connect them to each other; they would have a real corpus callosum joining them (albeit with links of radio waves rather than wires). And if you connected a number of people to each other via the Internet, then you would have a network in which each node was a human brain. The World Wide Web would become the

World Wide Mind

.”

...

Chorost presents a unique argument: we biologically and emotionally crave deep intimacy with each other, and although we don’t recognize it in ourselves, we yearn for precisely the same kind of constant connectivity with each other that machines enjoy. In order to support his thesis, Chorost gives the example of the importance of touch in making us feel happier, be healthier and live longer. Babies whose mothers have stroked their back have fewer colds, for instance. Our desire for skin-to-skin contact is thus a biological and emotional need essential to our normal functioning. Our bodies are not autonomous or independent: we constantly absorb and react to the signals of other bodies. Sex is the most intense manifestation of this back-and-forth intimacy.

“Sex is a deliberate testing of the boundaries, an intense investigation of barriers-that-are-also-transmitters. Wanting to touch every square millimeter of another being’s skin and be touched in turn. That desire to have every word we say in the primal darkness listened to with compassionate intensity. We have wanted a World Wide Mind inchoately, inarticulately, for thousands of years.”

...

Chorost’s book represents the new trend to see technology as more than a cold utilitarian tool, but as a harbinger of good and social harmony if used in the right ways.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/30736

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Sounds like Barbarella. (4:34)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI1sUP2dvcI

[Ban Hammer 12,839]

i feel dirty just reading aj's post.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

i feel dirty just reading aj's post.

You'd never leave your bed.

[Amby 490]

my panties for a lil wet cos I thought this was about an orgy where only really smart people were allowed

[misterbigtoe 45]

my panties for a lil wet cos I thought this was about an orgy where only really smart people were allowed

I thought it was generally a male proclivity to let the little brain do the thinking

[thongd4me 69]

There's much to be said for that view.

I met my wife online and got to love her thinking before we met in real life.

I had many many online friends before her and it was her thinking that

set her apart from all the rest, not just that she was Asian & attractive.

[Darnell 8,478]

geez - the interfaces would be too slow, for 'real time brain fusing'.

sorry.