Your Friendly Ubiquitous All-Mind
David Dalrymple peers into our internet-augmented future:
Within the next 50 years, I expect the development of direct neural links, making the data that’s available at our fingertips today available at our synapses in the future, and making virtual reality actually feel more real than traditional sensory perception. Information and experience could be exchanged between our brains and the network without any conscious action. And at some point, knowledge may be so external, all knowledge and experience will be shared universally, and the only notion of an “individual” will be a particular focus — a point in the vast network that concerns itself only with a specific subset of the information available.
On the one hand, this sounds like some sort of technically-enabled Buddhist ideal, a sea of undifferentiated souls disappearing into nirvana, the end of individual consciousness, everyone entirely at peace with themselves and with the universe.
On the other hand, every fucking word of it terrifies me. The ubiquitous internet all-mind feels like a new kind of dystopia.
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