So, I used to believe in biological evolution. It was the only thing that made sense with the evidence. From this belief, in college, I came up with this idea of where we were headed in the future. If you look at the story of evolution, it says we started out as molecules, which grouped together in cells, which grouped together in multi-cellular organisms, which (in some species: ants, bees, and termites) grouped together in hives. So you can see this repeated grouping through evolutionary history. Humans are something in between individuals and groups. The next evolutionary step for humans seemed obvious to me. Humans had to move to the next highest level of evolution groups or tribes or hives, whichever term you want to use.
There are examples of this sort of thing happening in science fiction. There is the Borg in Star Trek. There is the tree of life in Avatar. There is the Zerg in StarCraft. And I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.
Some might say we are already there in some aspects. We are connected to each other through the internet. We live our days working in companies everyone working together in the giant buildings like honeycomb or termite hives. And then we have a family unit in our house. We divide ourselves into groups with group labels based on politics, sports, and entertainment.
The sort of group I envisioned in my college days were people connected together through the internet and connected to the internet via brain-computer interfaces, effectively being brain-to-brain interfaces through the computer. Since biologically, the brain is the seat of consciousness, people would be able to communicate thoughts directly to one another, bypassing all the middle men of our body, no need for eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin. All these senses can be reproduced electrically by stimulating the brain in the correct way. We would probably spend our time simulating various entertainment environments sharing or co-experiencing the fun.
Another implication of brain-to-brain interfaces would be a huge reduction in selfishness and greatly increased empathy. The idea of one individual being separate from another would go by the way-side and we would have a communal sense of self. The group-self composed of the merging of minds into one super-being.
So, here I am right now. And the previous paragraphs are about where I want to go. It is obviously a ways off, and it may never happen especially if I become a math teacher. But it was my dream, and I still like the idea connecting and bringing people together.
This has implications for education. If people ever develop brain-computer interfaces, we may be able to download the content and ways of thinking into the students' brain. If such a thing ever happens, we would be able to greatly shorten the length of education needed for students, and they can move on to more important things like enjoying life.
These are really interesting thoughts. I am now wondering how would you connect this to your classroom in terms of a lesson or to share information? What kind of research tools are out there to explore more on this topic?
ReplyDeleteI never noticed or made the connection of a repetition of grouping in species over evolution, very interesting. I'm just wondering how you want to implement this into your teaching. Do you want students to work mostly in groups? Or do you want them to find this pattern on their own? Interested in seeing where your going to involve this is the content area and classroom.
ReplyDeleteBecause the possibility of brain computer interfaces is a long ways off, I think both individual learning and group learning are both important for the near future.
DeleteWow, this is really interesting! I've never heard of anything like this before. Further, I never would have thought that there would have been a graduate school for this topic. That is so cool. I really like how novel your thinking is with taking evolution forward rather than thinking about it in the past. I think that novel thinking and approach will be very helpful for you as a teacher. Where are researchers currently? Is this something you are going to share directly with you students? Along with Kathryn's response, will you have your students using a lot of technology in your classroom to create sort of a "mock" joint mind? What areas of the math content are you going to do this for?
ReplyDeleteThere are researchers working on this sort of thing (recording and stimulating neurons with electrode) at Duke, Berkeley, Minneapolis (where I was), Penn State. Probably more by now.
DeleteI'm not going to share this with students unless they are interested and it comes up in conversation. Or I may talk about it if I teach biology, which was my undergraduate degree.
Maybe we will have a groupish mind in math class. I might use a today's meet like program to let students share their thoughts with the whole class. And I would have the question list posted for everyone to see while in class.
Awesome Michael! I posted already but I don't know what happened to my comment, so instead of trying to rewrite what I wrote, I have a fresh thought. I think evolution happens in a biological sense, but also in a consciousness sense. There is a culture of people who believe that, instead of the notion that we are evolving to be more connected, that we have and always will be connected as consciousness. What is changing is how we feel and know about it, and the technology available to make connections. The idea is, we are all part of the same environments, and are all humans meaning we have the same apparatus with which to interpret the energy around us. So, without beliefs saying we are separate, the understanding would be that we are connected because we are the same in the end. I think the idea that we are separate comes from the idea that we have separate bodies, and this is totally true (except that our bodies all behave basically the same way). But on the other hand, if we are more so consciousness than we are our bodies, then I think we are all connected more intricately than we have ever been taught to understand.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Aaron that we are all connected and are consciousness and that consciousness is the fundamental truth.
DeleteMichael, your exploration of computer-brain interfaces is delicious reading. It has a scyfy feel yet is closer to reality that we'd like to admit. I can't help but think of the work of Andy Clark at University of Edinburgh when I read your posts. Check out his books, Being There (1997) and Natural Born Cyborgs (2003)
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