“I trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement.”*
Imagine if you had to learn how to be an Architect or Civil-Engineer,
-But you weren’t allowed 2x4s, wood, bricks, cement, steel I-beams, bolts, nails, mud, hay, cow-butts; -nothing in the way of building-supplies,
And all you were allowed to do was take apart existing skyscrapers, experiment, and sketch?
Well, that phase in Brain-Science is over.
We now have the initial lab-grown Lego-blocks of Tomorrow’s Burj-Khalifa-Saturn-5-Rocket-Super-Brain.
European scientists have created the first [teeny-tiny] Stem-Cell-Sourced Petri-Dish-Brain; -kinda.
-And of course some day eventually, because we can’t have nice things, Evil will come along and ruin it all.
Probably the NSA,
And they’ll surely have giant underground warehouses full of engineered and perfected wetware-bio-renderfarms toiling away at snooping the planet in increasingly intelligent and insightful ways.
But until then;…
-If you can 3-D Print just about anything, Then: Why not an Actual, Full-Sized brain?
The IMB scientists completed the first step toward World-Domination in Vienna, Edinburgh and others, with a small 3-4mm (or in Industry-Standard-Lingo, “The George-W-Bush-Size”) mini-brain called an “Organoid”.
Now all they need is a printer and an organic scaffold. They can figure out the circulatory-system later.
From there, the sky’s the limit.
Why not Replacement Parts?
-Got an injury, disorder, or bad-taste-in-music-problem?
We can fix that.
Scan the same region from a healthy brain, 3-D Print a copy, Swap in the part.
Pop Music addiction cured!
Same with Car Accident, Narcissism, Hail Damage, joining a Rugby Team, etc.
-And maybe even further out, after Fixes,…
maybe even Upgrades.
But now that we have the first set of brain Tinker-Toys, what if we end up replacing or upgrading Too Much?…
How do we know when we’ll stop being “Us”?
-When that elusive area/set of areas you might call “The Seat of The Self” accidentally got swapped out?
-Like people with fugue or personalities that change after lightning-strikes, injury or YouTube-Documented Anesthesia?
The idea seems a little far off, but if at least both Mary Shelley and Steve Martin could write about it, well it’s got to be worth some consideration.
-Swapped-in brain parts could go Nine-Teen-70’s-Nine-Minute-Plus-Funk-Rock-Keyboard-Solo-Meets-Gothic-Horror-Novel-Scale-Haywire,
JUMP BONUS 1! -Frankenstein By Edgar Winter:
…-And that reasonably-priced, Top-Seller, “Fully-Tested” eBay bolt-on brain-supercharger might misfire so spectacularly, that your mere suburban presence summons hordes of peasants with torches, pitchforks, and baleful admonitions of regret like,
“By the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the daemon who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict.
For this purpose I will preserve my life; to execute this dear revenge will I again behold the sun and tread the green herbage of earth, which otherwise should vanish from my eyes forever.
And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work.
Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me.”*
-Either way, Check out the “Shot Heard ‘Round The World”-Details at the Links:
JUMP BONUS 2!-The Man With Two Brains!!!:
Photo/Video Credits:
“My View”, R. Schmidt, club-pac.de
Agent Smith and His Copies from “The Matrix Reloaded”, by The Wachowski Brothers, Joel Silver, Village Roadshow Pictures, and Warner Brothers
3D Printing Shapeways, by Engineering.com/3D Printing
“Frankenstein”, by The Edgar Winter Group
The Man With 2 Brains Trailer, by Steve Martin, Carl Reiner, George Gipe and Warner Brothers
Links:
• Source: Popsci
• More Coverage: Discovery | YT-Seeing her for the first time again | PT-After Brain Injury: Learning to Love a Stranger | Einstürzende Neubauten
• Source Study: Nature-Cerebral organoids model human brain development and microcephaly
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