So you're a cyborg - now what?
May 7th, 2012
10:09 AM ET

So you're a cyborg - now what?

Quick: What's the fattiest system in your body that has two halves and weighs between 2 and 4 pounds?

It's your brain - you know, that thing that remembers stuff. But because of rapidly evolving information technology, your first impulse was probably to search for the answer on the Internet.

As we become ever more dependent on external sources of memory - using GPS to guide our driving, smartphones to keep our schedules - it's time to rethink our ideas about what "memory" actually is.

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soundoff (2 Responses)
  1. mandarax

    Reminds me of a section of Carl Sagan's Dragons of Eden (an interesting if outdated work on brain evolution) where he describes history in terms of information management, and attributes the explosion of humanity to increases in external information storage – beginning with language, then writing, then libraries, then computers, then the internet...

    My first reading of that cast human evolution in a whole new light.

    May 14, 2012 at 10:33 am | Reply
  2. Portland tony

    Prepare to be assimilated by the Borg. And the way things are going, this may be an improvement for mankind!

    May 7, 2012 at 5:24 pm | Reply

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