The Sci-Fi Tech Of The Human Brain

 
     A few years ago, okay it was about fifteen years ago, I played Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The game was stunning. It was far too detailed and complex for my young self to fully comprehend and appreciate but I had fun building towns and units, terraforming land and progressing along the tech tree. I was reminded of the tech tree and one particular technology recently when I read an article about Henry Markram. He is a South African Neuroscientist who has embarked on a project closely akin to the fictional "Secrets of the human brain" tech from that old game. The audacious plan is to build a supercomputer to map and simulate the workings of every synapse and neuron in a human brain. The exact implications are debatable but their importance is not. Whether the computer provides an exact, infinitely tune-able model of the human mind to aid in the research of physiological and psychological disorders or it becomes a functioning self-aware consciousness is open for discussion. Either way something big is going to happen. And it is happening. Markram has secured 1.3 Billion Euro in funding for the E.U.
     The reason this project caught my eye, apart from it's scope and promise, was the way it reminded me of the kind of science which seemed fitting to put in a science fiction game only a few(okay fifteen) years ago. I am a young man and I've already seen several technologies cross from science fiction to science fact. Mobile phones and the International Space Station are two off the top of my head. It seems we're approaching the point where futurism is impossible beyond ten years simply because there is no way to know where we'll be. It is hard enough to keep up with the present. It would be very embarrassing for a science fiction writer to dream up some fantastical device or technology only to be told by some fourteen year old that it's been on the app store for the last six months!
     Another thought on this topic is my view that as the level and ubiquity of tech in our lives increases the scientific horizon for futurists is pushed further back. Although whatever our guess is we're likely to be wrong. In William Gibson's Neuromancer we visit a black market in software where cyber punks with USB slots in their heads sell bootleg floppy disks under the counter. Gibson couldn't have foreseen the Pirate Bay or the open-source community making such dealings obsolete. Likewise in Robert A Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land we see the Man From Mars getting so much fan mail he insulates the onion cellar with the unopened letters. Again there was no way for Heinlein to expect Email in his world of flying cars and lunar colonies. When I first saw Ghost in the Shell I couldn't get my head around it. The world was too alien to anything I had seen before for me to even consider the world Masamune Shirow was suggesting. The Sci-fi of Ghost in the shell showed a world of extreme physical augmentation and brain hacking. To read or steal someones thoughts electronically seemed absurd at the time. Today looking at Markram's work it seems far more believable. Although we haven't reached it yet, there's a day coming when reality will be beyond the imagination of early science fiction writers. Living on the moon and flying cars were easy. We had cars and we had the moon. Today we're just checking off the list of things they imagined. People in space, check. underwater ships, check. monkey butlers...Ahem. Anyway "Secrets of the human Brain" is next on the check list and after we've exhausted their list all bets are off.

Cyber Fear!

Our kids are being turned into hyper-violent, socially crippled introverts. Also they’re fat. And lots of them are pregnant, but that’s for another rant. It’s all the internet’s fault apparently. I feel bombarded by a certain scaremongering brand of journalim. Big scary buzz words abound, cyber-bullying being my particular favourite. It implies some sort of dystopian future (or present) shot with a pale blue filter where malevolent teens, presumably on drugs, in some basement full of mismatched LED screens are using their arcane knowledge to torment your poor child in ways you can’t prevent and to much greater effect than anything that came before. Its true kids are bullying each other on Facebook and by text but that said they bully each other on the bus, in school, at football practice, and pretty much everywhere else there’s more than one child. The ‘cyber’ realm may be the one exception where kids actually find it possible to avoid the onslaught. Facebook, for all the criticism it’s received on the subject, does in fact have many features to make your profile as private, secure and discriminating about who can contact you as you like (if you’ll excuse the turn of phrase). If you’re receiving threatening messages block the user who’s sending them. Kids using social media to torment their peers is obviously an issue but to label it “cyber-bullying” lends it far too much sinister gravitas. To invoke the ‘cyber’ element of the bullying as though it makes the act somehow different is purely a ploy by newspapers with middle aged readers to frighten and outrage said readers.

Texts are much trickier however. Kids are rarely inclined to call the police to track a number sending offensive messages. Kids not talking about being bullied is a big part of the problem. The core of the issue is of course the anonymity that these media provide the tormentors. They can say things in a text that they would never dare say in person. Even the bullies themselves may be unaware of the extent of the trauma their words create. It’s an easy effect to see. Anyone who’s ever scrolled through the comments of a vaguely controversial Youtube video can see how easily people become disconnected from the words they type. It’s caused by not having a face to speak to and in a way having none to speak from. Their words don’t have the power of a personality or name to give what they say any weight, so they unconsciously ramp up the extreme language, vulgar turns of phrase and as we’re all too aware, the caps lock. They are literally screaming to be heard and noticed in a world of a billion equally ignorable voices. One would be forgiven for assuming that kids raised in this environment would be somewhat desensitized to anonymous usernames screaming caps locked swearwords at them but of course it’s the personal nature of the messages that gets to the victims.

A perfect example of the disconnection between ones words and their effect can be seen on Xbox Live. I’m not a regular visitor to the digital killing fields of Call of Duty but in the few forays I have made it’s been the voices in the headset that upset me far more than the gunshots screams and blood splatters. Trying to wander around an abandoned airport and shoot people would have been much more enjoyable if it weren’t for the team of rabid fourteen year olds roaring the kind of language that would turn heads in a Scorsese film. Again it’s because the kids doing the shouting cannot see their words hit the mark. Not that I was reduced to tears or anything. I can handle having my sexuality questioned every time I shoot or fail to shoot an opponent. But it’s an interesting incubator for vulgarity. It’s a war zone in there and healthy attitude or not a lot of players are heavily invested in their kill/death ratio. For the parents passing the bedroom door, it’s understandable why they believe the game is driving their son into some kind of murderous frenzy. Maybe it is but when you understand the game a little better it’s not dissimilar to the crowd at some strange football match where every shout falls on deaf ears, every player is against every other and the referee is a faceless unreasonable machine. This doesn't prevent the scaremongers from constantly questioning if violent games make violent kids. It seems very odd to me to hear shooting games scapegoated as the catalyst for real world shootings. The Grand Theft Auto series is a prime example. Particularly in the U.S! To claim it’s the games kids play that makes them obsessed with war, guns and murdering in one of the most militarised countries in the world is madness. It’s a country recently involved in two wars where anyone who shoots people for a living is hailed as a hero and automatic weapons seem to be so common people must be tripping over them in the streets. The games are affected by society not vice versa.

Much of the media makes use of peoples fear and ignorance of modern digital trends. The fear of the unknown draws people to these articles. They want to know more but maybe subconsciously they want to be offended by what they learn. It’s the media’s responsibility to inform these people, allay their fears and reassure them that we’re not sinking into some kind of William Gibson style dystopia and that at the end of the day people are just people. They use new ways to communicate and interact but apart from that not much has changed.