Would you Connect Your Brain to the Internet?

I started living in such a futuristic bubble that I am genuinely surprised when I ask people if they would connect their brain directly to the internet and they respond with a very weird look that suggests I am a little bit crazy. But that's life.

Technological advances bring us closer and closer to a general brain-computer interface. There already is a prototype technology that is able to transform thoughts into text, you can read more here. People all around the world are working on achieving this goal, even Elon Musk created a company called Neuralink that seeks to develop " ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers.". There will be a lot of ways this can be done, but the most ergonomic interface will most probably be created with the help of nanobots.

In order to imagine how this would work, let's see how we relate to the internet now. First of all, we are dependant on a piece of hardware that is able to support the connection. This hardware also has some simple qualities that makes it useful. It has an input method in the form of a mouse, keyboard, touchscreen or verbal commands. It also has output capabilities, the most common are visual and auditive, but there also are tactile outputs for blind people. And that hardware also needs to have processing power and storage. The current way of doing things is very slow, the output of information is fantastic, but the rate at which we can request and process that information is severely limited.

Let's go back to the nanobots. The idea is that all the necessary components of connecting to the internet are found in the biological structure of our brain. Nanobots will be able to receive inputs from our thoughts and will be able to piggyback on the optical and auditive systems in order to use them to display visual information and sounds. Basically, they will be able to add a digital layer of consciousness on top of "normal" reality. And on the other hand, processing and storage is something the brain does really well, orders of magnitude better than current computers. So all the necessary hardware is already there, all we need to do is find a coherent way of making a digital connection.

If we will ever be able to achieve this fantastic feat of connectivity it will mean that people will have instant access to all the information online. Just imagine the impact this would have on society. An architect would be able to build the most resistant building ever. A professor would teach the most up to date and coherent information. Doctors would make diagnostic decisions that far are superior to what is done now. But one of the most interesting changes would be that lying will become very hard.

This brings into the discussion a very interesting possibility, to outsource processing and storage power to the cloud. There already is a name for this concept, exocortex, which basically means outside brain. The last addition to our brain was the neocortex and this newly added part of the brain gave us language and culture. I can't even start to imagine what would such an extension of brain power would bring. But for sure it will be something fascinating,

But on the other hand, with such technology, the concept of a computer virus or malware start having totally different proportions. We will see a lot of things that will go wrong in this process of development, but I think a brain-machine interface is an inevitability.

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So my question to you is: If connecting your mind to the internet would be 100% safe and the connection would be totally under your control. Would you do it?

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