July 21 2008 / by futuretalk
Category: Other Year: General Rating: 7 Hot
By Dick Pelletier
If there was a pill that could immediately improve your memory,
enabling you to recall any selected event in your past with sharp
detail, would you take it? How about a pill that would erase an
unwanted memory, like a traumatic childhood event that still
bothers you in adult life? 
And even more radical, would you like to download knowledge
directly into your brain enabling you to immediately speak and
understand a new language, or instantly learn any new subject
matter, without suffering through the lengthy process of learning
from scratch?
Memory-management drugs that address the first two questions are
being developed now and should be available in about five years,
according to Memory Pharmaceuticals, www.memorypharma.com, a
leading New Jersey drug research firm.
Most of these memory remedies focus on boosting recall, but some
address the 13 million Americans who suffer from post-traumatic
stress disorder with drugs that will dim, or even erase, traumatic
memories. Such products promise to revolutionize psychotherapy.
Instead of trying to overcome a past trauma, patients will soon be
able to simply erase all memories of the event as if it had never
happened – problem solved.
A more radical and futuristic technology, downloading knowledge
directly into our brain, could be available in the near future,
according to Peter Passaro, graduate student at Georgia Tech, in
his article posted at www.betterhumans.com. Passaro suggests that
mind-machine interfaces will be available by 2020, and he mentions
how this might be accomplished. (cont.)
We could create a brain implant similar to the way cochlear
implants improve hearing today, he says. This would fool the brain
into thinking it had already learned the information. Or we might
use upcoming nanotechnology to restructure our neurons giving them
advanced programming of any knowledge we wanted.
These futuristic projections may sound like science fiction, but
when we anticipate how new research is unfolding – the recent
brain-mapping project launched by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen,
completion of the Human Genome Project, and other advancing
research – we can safely predict that these “miracles” will, beyond
any doubt, become part of our everyday life in the future.
Memory-managing drugs hold promise to change the boundaries of
freedom of thought similar to how the Internet is changing freedom
of speech. And direct brain downloads – as far out as it sounds –
promises to one day offer amazing intelligence boosts to everyone
on earth.
As we enter into what positive futurists refer to as a “magical
future” time, we realize that science and technologies can do more
than just repair sick people; they can raise our standard of
living, add to our happiness, and greatly improve how we interact
with the world around us. Comments welcome.
Comment Thread ()
