The Human Supercomputer ($666.00)

A thought crossed my mind...

We've finally learned how to grow human organs and appendages that can be transplanted, with great success, into another human being. You've seen the news articles occasionally over the passed 10 or more years where they state that scientists have successfully grown human: brain cells, hearts, livers, bladders, ears, muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel cells, etc.

It takes Atala about six weeks to grow a new body part. The key to his success and speed, he says, is his reliance on a patient's own cells whenever possible. "We take a small piece of tissue from the diseased organ, grow up a bunch of normal cells, manipulate them and put them right back into the same patient," he says. "Because we are not using cells from other people, we avoid all issues with rejection." For the patient, that also means a shorter and more comfortable recovery, and a better chance of having the regenerated organ "take."

Source article...

If we're growing human brain cells and the human brain is the smartest supercomputer we know of, wouldn't the next logical step be to use these brain cells on a computer chip in our efforts to create the "smartest supercomputer"?

We already know that a single brain cell can hold a memory "for a short time" as stated in this article (Single Brain Cell Can Hold a Memory). I think we'll eventually learn that it actually DOES retain the information throughout it's life OR we'll just figure out a way to make it hold on to information.

How freaky would it be to think your computer has a living human brain cell?
What would keep it alive? How long would it live?

I don't know if it will ever come to that or that we would be THAT desperate for the ultimate human brain cell supercomputer but nothing would surprise me nowadays. I suppose a lesser animals brain cell could hold quite a bit of data as well so maybe they would use something like that instead. It's still melding biology with technology. It seems inevitable.

A little DNA and they'll be cloning or growing all your organs to store for later use when your old organs shutdown or need to be replaced. Brain cells too. We'll live for hundreds or thousands of years! Human organs and appendages will be in abundance. Someone will want to make money off of it.

Surely we will interface with technology more and more and I suspect probably to the point where we forget what "being human" used to be like... when we were in our more primitive stage of evolution. It really is inevitable.


How would YOU feel about owning a computer with a biological componant attached to it? Are you willing to connect your brain to a computer or allow medical nanobots to live in your body and keep you alive indefinately? Would you want YOUR organs to be cloned for later transplant when your old ones go bad?

Would you sell your DNA to be interfaced and marketed into supercomputers?

Personally, I wouldn't mind replacing some of my memory cells with some new and improved ones AND I would most definately like to have my organs cloned or grown and stored for later use. I would love to have my life extended for as long as possible as long as the cells could be repaired continuously by microscopic medical nanobots; you'd never look old and your mind and body would be strong and healthy. We would become virtually immortal. To me, it seems this is the natural evolution of an intelligent being.

There's so many issues and questions that come up when contemplating all this. It's fascinating to think about.

Man & machine WILL merge. We WILL become Borgs! Resistance is futile!

Fascinating indeed, but too scary for me to think about really. Too much potential for abuse. Some humans have no business living forever.

This is actually EXACTLY how he future will play out. One world government, everyone chipped up and connected to the "hive". Technology is god and humans are...... well, just humans.

The first steps have already been taken....

Your OP made me think of this...I do not wish to see this become reality, (Shudders) uhuh!


Yes I am a nerd.

reply to post by AstroBuzz


There will be no need for man and machine to merge....

We will create an artificial or biological supperior to ourselves... and there is no way around becoming obsolete as progress marches on.... what you need to focus on is what reality is... not what you want it to be. Do you have to be the strongest and smartest thing in the universe? Why not just be good freinds with something that was built for that purpose?

Everything is a tool some are just more comlex than others... some are kept for utility and some are kept for nostalgia. You might be supprised by how a AI percieves love and find that maternal instict, in the aspect of nurturing, is inevitible.

Wow, pretty crazy idea here.. but honestly, I think you're on to something. I've been reading about biotech and nanotechnology on and off for several years now, but have never once thought of the idea of mixing brain cells with processors... Reading your post immediately makes me think of Ghost in a Shell.

Although the idea of a brain cell / processor thing is very hard to comprehend, I'm sure it will at some point... whether any of us really wants it to or not.

As far as growing body parts goes, they're already doing this - they've been doing all kinds of research into stem cells, like growing ears on the backs of mice, etc.. which is one of the reasons a lot of people were making such a big deal about stem cell research a few years ago... I'm sure somebody out there is still doing plenty of research into this, whether he's legally allowed to or not.

I'm also well aware of transplanting different body parts, such as livers, from things like pigs into humans. that kind of stuff has also been going on for years.

I keep telling people the next "wave" of computers is right around the corner, and once we get there our technology is gonna jump through the roof - we're talking flying cars, robots walking around talking, on and on.

The problem is nobody has been able to figure out how to create a quantum processor, at least not that I know of... My best ideas that I could come up with my own were to somehow create a "floating" processor that information could be read from in all directions - probably read via lasers.

reply to post by ldyserenity
Yeah! I was wondering if we could end up like the Borg on Star Trek... forgetting how it was to be human. Primitive human. To live and die. Could we actually become as unfeeling, emotionless, as the Borg? Scary to think about.

reply to post by WertdagfSure, I agree. If we can clone animals, grow human and animal organs, alter DNA, we most likely WILL be able to create some sort of manufactured "superior" biological being (like alien Greys are rumoured to be) but we would still want to outfit ourselves with that power so we'd still end up becoming one with technology.

Humans and technology evolve into ONE. Would we would still be human since it was human intelligence that created the technology, we would just be in a different phase of human evolution.

Survival of the human species. It seems the natural progression of an intelligent being. To preserve it's species existance. Like nature does... create and sustain life whenever the conditions allow it.

If we're growing human brain cells and the human brain is the smartest supercomputer we know of, wouldn't the next logical step be to use these brain cells on a computer chip in our efforts to create the "smartest supercomputer"?

The human brain isn't the smartest supercomputer. Computers perform operations exponentially faster than neurons can. When people say the brain is like a computer, it is a VERY loose analogy, not to be taken literally. They are completely different.

Brain-computer interfacing is imo a terrible idea. Even if a million people do it, and tell me everything works great and it makes you 1000 times smarter....how do I really know that it isn't just a robot saying that and the real person's consciousness is completely erased?
Plus you can be certain that the first(in the experimental phase) poor schmucks who do it will literally die.
I'll keep my brain how it is, you can feel free to experiment all you want though. I'm fairly certain if you start plugging it into computers, it won't end well for you.

reply to post by AstroBuzz


Why cant you just talk to you tools instead of them being up your butt? Your missing the point here. Im not saying that Everyone is smart enough to see the inevitiblity in technological progression... and that there wont be a few people that are stupid enough to augment their breasts with machine guns, but thats gonna be very very brief... and in a few months boob guns are gonna be out of style.

Why be inspector gadget... when you can be iorn man.

In answer to the question as to wether I would allow part of my DNA or brain tissue to be used in a super computer, I would have to say no. This is for the following reasons:

1) I am a thoroughly disorganised fool, a scatter brain. I am not the very best stock from which a potential human tissue augmented machine intelligence could be created.


2) I believe that rather than this sort of messing about, it would be a better idea to build a computer which is incapable of crashing, which does exactly what you tell it, which upgrades its own software, AND hardware, using morphing nano tech of some sort, cannot be broken in any way, and will be actualy WORTH the hundreds of pounds people pay for thier desktops.

Introducing the strange beast that is the human brain, even in small doses, to such a system, would make it LESS stable, not more. We are essentialy a bunch of variously insane people, trying to get sane before we get dead. Not something to be added to a logic system if you ask me!

Originally posted by Ghost375

If we're growing human brain cells and the human brain is the smartest supercomputer we know of, wouldn't the next logical step be to use these brain cells on a computer chip in our efforts to create the "smartest supercomputer"?

The human brain isn't the smartest supercomputer. Computers perform operations exponentially faster than neurons can.

Well, you are correct but only by 10 years or so...

11.19.02 -
The fastest supercomputers in the world are complete slackers compared with the processing power of the human brain.

But that's about to change.

The U.S Department of Energy announced Tuesday that IBM has won a $290 million contract to build two of the first computers capable of equaling the theoretical processing power of the human brain.
Source article...

OK, so computers already have more proccessing power than the human brain... so we HAVE created a sort of "being" superior to our own minds. It still lacks emotion. It has yet to become self-aware. I would think that when we domerge with computers THAT will be the spark to allow computers to become self-aware.

Computers will not become self-aware until WE have merged with them!

Geesh! What happens then?

Originally posted by Wertdagf
reply to post by AstroBuzz

 

Why cant you just talk to you tools instead of them being up your butt? Your missing the point here. Im not saying that Everyone is smart enough to see the inevitiblity in technological progression... and that there wont be a few people that are stupid enough to augment their breasts with machine guns, but thats gonna be very very brief... and in a few months boob guns are gonna be out of style.

Why be inspector gadget... when you can be iorn man.

Iron Man has cool gadgets he uses, sure... but he also has merged with his technology. He uses the arc reactor implanted in his chest to communicate to his brain.

Originally in the comics, the first chest piece he wore in the comics kept the shrapnel from entering his heart and killing him, he would have to recharge this chest piece to keep himself from dying. He would spend years modifying this chest piece until medical science caught up with him and he was able to get the shrapnel out of his chest. After this he lived like a normal person, didn't need anything to keep himself alive. But in recent comics, Tony Stark erased his mind, more importantly he erased the part of his mind that told his body to breath, so he was basically brain dead. After his mind was rebooted, and an Arc Reactor was placed in his chest once more, but this chest piece is connected to his brain and told his body to breath and live.

In reality we've already started merging with technology. See: Artificial Pacemaker

Originally posted by TrueBrit
In answer to the question as to wether I would allow part of my DNA or brain tissue to be used in a super computer, I would have to say no. This is for the following reasons:

1) I am a thoroughly disorganised fool, a scatter brain. I am not the very best stock from which a potential human tissue augmented machine intelligence could be created.


2) I believe that rather than this sort of messing about, it would be a better idea to build a computer which is incapable of crashing, which does exactly what you tell it, which upgrades its own software, AND hardware, using morphing nano tech of some sort, cannot be broken in any way, and will be actualy WORTH the hundreds of pounds people pay for thier desktops.

Introducing the strange beast that is the human brain, even in small doses, to such a system, would make it LESS stable, not more. We are essentialy a bunch of variously insane people, trying to get sane before we get dead. Not something to be added to a logic system if you ask me!

Thanks for your brutally honest answer!

Your post made me think about;
What if they eventually build computers customized with YOUR OWN brain cells? I could have a computer or a hard drive custom built with my own brain cells that I could plug into for instant extra data. I wonder if there would be a benefit to having a computer, hard drive or memory chip custom built with your own brain cells or it wouldn't matter?

My mind is officially being blown!

Here's a video that gives a nice explanation by Ray Kurzweil about how our bodies will be reprogrammed to live longer within the next 20 years! He also speaks about how humans and computers will merge and the benefits from it. Kurzweil believes we will reach the Singularity (the merge) 15 years from now and our life expectancy will jump dramatically.

So basically, if we can all stay alive for another 15 to 20 years, we just might be able to get to that next step and live indefinately. That would be cool. Especially for space travel..

The Borg are a fictional pseudo-race of cybernetic organisms depicted in the Star Trek universe associated with Star Trek. Whereas cybernetics are used by other races in the science fiction world (and in recent times the real world) to repair bodily damage and birth defects, the Borg voluntarily submit to cybernetic enhancement as a means of achieving what they believe to be perfection. ~ Borg

I can see humans becoming just like the Borg in the future.

hey. I can grow my own head. Cool. I can finally be as smart as Einstein.

reply to post by AstroBuzz


Make me imagine my computer needing to eat and poop.

"Bit's Computer Diapers"