Do you ever think we'll be able to download information into our minds??

[dunlop]

read the question!

just like the matrix films you know! where carrie ann moss learns to ride the motorbike or neo learns martial arts that would be sooo cool!

[QmunkE]

As cool as it might be, I think it's probably fairly unlikely that we'll be able to do this any time close to the near-distant future.

Also, just "knowing" how to do martial arts in reality wouldn't necessarily mean you could do them - if you were a sumo wrestler and studied how to do karate then you still probably couldn't actually do it.

[Gilli]

This is one of my little daydreams .... imagine how brilliant it'd be if we could all speak and understand every world language at the flick of a switch .....

... but then again, imagine the potential for abuse ! Just think of the 1000s of viruses on the PC ...... & how would anyone be able to stand trial, their defence would be that corrupt info had been downloaded and therefore wasn't a true reflection of their actual psyche ..... & what a fantastic opportunity for conmen, dictators and the like.

I know I'm letting my imagination run away with me now but you just know that this "advance" - if it ever became reality would be abused in the blink of an eye.

[stevie21]

Absolutely positively not. Not ever. No.

[dunlop]

how do you know this do you have proof?

[stevie21]

We have very little knowledge of how the brain works - as I feel like I keep saying (sorry, "have quote, will travel") it's the single most complex entity in the known universe.  We know absolutely nowhere near enough to even attempt this and given the nature of the brain (billions of cells interacting to produce a combined output, NOT 10,00 cells here exclusively for memory, 20,000 over there for anger) this is unlikely to change

For example, memories are not stored in one part of the brain.  Nobody knows where they're stored or how, so to integrate something like a microchip containing something akin to a memory store would be impossible really.
We'd have no idea where to put it or how to integrate it with the rest of the cells.

What if a particular part of memory turns out to be deep inside the brain?  How do we plug into that without damaging all the other layers above it?

Motor control is different but that's not your question : there are distinct bits of the brain which are responsible for control (and sensation) in every body part.

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