Will neural interfacing be commonplace in a future we live to see? If so, what biomedical and bioengineering feats will be necessary? Most important, what function-restoring neural prostheses are being researched that show promise for the disabled, and may eventually lead to function-amplifying implants?
There’s a rapt, mindless fascination with these disembodying or ability-augmenting technologies … The desire to be wired is part of the larger fantasy of disembodiment, the deep, childlike desire to go beyond one’s body. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly for the handicapped it can be very liberating. For others, who have the desire without the need, there can be problems. Political power still exists inside the body, and being out of one’s body or extending one’s body through technology doesn’t change that.
Computer network and hacker slang is filled with references to “being wired” or “jacking in” to a computer network, “wetware” (the brain), and “meat” (the body). The human body is becoming a hack site, the mythology goes, a nexus where humanity and technology are forging a new and powerful relationship.
“Information will be a public good,” … possibly requiring a government agency to police information, as the Securities and Exchange Commission does for the financial markets. “It will be a much more ethical marketplace.”
Consumer markets will become much more efficient. For the first time ever you will have perfect information.
Third parties might compile movie ratings or restaurant reviews and make them available. Eventually advertising would become obsolete. “When you have self-promotion, you have biased information, low-grade information.”
The people who are now making the Net revolution happen are pretty public-spirited characters who want the best for the world, and the feeling is that as you get this really significant power to practically everybody, that’s good for everybody in the long run.
If total public cryptography and lots of financial transactions come to the Net, will you pay taxes in the future? You won’t. This is one terrifying fantasy from the government standpoint … A whole lot of financial activity basically goes black, goes underground. And then you can’t tax transactions, you can’t track transactions. All you’ve got left to tax basically is possessions at that point and so you may see … property taxes going up and sales taxes disappearing.
There’s a kind of gymnastic ability just mentally that’s needed to stay with this kind of thing, so there is a frightening aspect to it. I think part of what we’ll be doing over the next decade or so is figuring out some ways to somehow make ourselves comfortable with that, maybe by slowing down the pace of change. We don’t want to live with things that break that bad – if a whole Net goes down it takes down the international currency with it, things like this. “OK, that’s a problem – let’s slow down.” That’s one way it might slow down. Another one is just people saying, “This is too fast, I can’t bear it.” And that’s, I think, the likelier way it’ll go.
Developing the information superhighway would effectively lower information costs, making our economy more competitive and enhancing the productivity of our workers.