"Whenever I talk with people born with the internet, I'm surprised at how informed and expressive they are. I don't think the previous generations could have matched up at the same age. Historically, technology has been the enabler of cognition and we're finding more and more ways to design tools for thought to augment our brains."
"We find that cybermorphosis changes between generations. The same people who grew up with the internet now don't know what files are."
"Hierarchical file systems are great at managing documents but it might not actually be the best way to work with concepts."
"While Stephen Hawking in the early 2010s used the few muscles he could still control in a clever way to communicate, today's Neuralink enables Noland Arbaugh to pull Civ VI all-nighters."
"We know surprisingly little about how cognition works."
"I still remember when we received a grant to purchase the (very expensive) NIRSport2 for our lab which was the state-of-the-art fNIRS neuroimaging equipment at the time. About a week after we received it, the revolutionary Kernel Flow came out, shaking up the field completely."
fNIRS stands for "functional near-infrared spectroscopy" and is a near-infrared spectroscopy technique that estimates the concentration of hemoglobin from changes in absorption of near infrared light. Kernel Flow is a fNIRS and electroencephalogram (EEG) headcap for "fast whole-head hemodynamic imaging".
"We know surprisingly little about how cognition works."
"Cybermorph hardware comes in many forms:"
"Multi-channel invasive neural implants for direct neural interaction (such as Neuralink)",
"Redesigned keyboards with new types of mapping to improve WPM",
"Direct current stimulation to key areas of the brain using tDCS devices",
"AR and VR glasses designed to improve how we interact with our extended mind", and
"New external effectors such as bionic limbs and prosthetics."
tDCS stands for "transcranial direct current stimulation" and is a technique where scalp electrodes create electric currents that create electric fields inside the brain that, depending on the polarity electric fields, increase or decrease neuronal activity in that brain region.
At the end, she (Esben Kran) issues a list of predictions for cybermorph brain augmentation. I'll let you click through to get the predictions.
