What will our minds be like in 20, 50, and 100 years?

First, let’s consider we could communicate with others but sharing our thoughts. Relationships between people that are further away would tighten, empathy could grow but so would selectivity or blocking. Moreover, this would change the way we think in a profound way- currently our thinking is closely associated with language- if another form of communication is more effective in some ways, such as sharing an image or emotion - gradually the very definition of language and not only the way we communicate but the way we form thoughts will change. Second, let’s consider retrieving memory and information through external means. In cases such as Alzheimer’s this would be amazing. In general, while I bet everyone wishes they could remember more and this is clearly a limitation of our current mind, a few challenges come with this as well. Our memory shouldn’t only be seen as an inefficient way of storing and retrieving memory - it is a filtering system. It tries to, sometimes unsuccessfully, tease out what is relevant and only remember that. When you form an opinion about a book you are forgetting nearly all its content. The information granted would have to be intelligently selective as well, otherwise we risk an information overwhelm.

100 years, we’ll access old memories and feelings vividly and with the ease of selecting a song on a playlist. Experience others’ experiences and feelings directly. Hate will melt away. Ever more aloneness but never lonely; ever more stillness but never bored. Human, sentimental, hopeful. Empathy will soar. Laughter will roar. The chasm between is and ought will be filled with solid light.

People seem to take for granted how little of a difference in brain hardware?we have with chimps. What makes humans smarter isn't that we?can process?100 chimp seconds of information per human second. This?small difference in hardware produced a *qualitative* improvement in cognition. And it's a pretty significant improvement at that.?You wouldn't be able to explain calculus to a chimp even if you had 1000 years to do so. Human minds in 50 years will have brain upgrades which improve on our *hardware* by orders of magnitude. The qualitative improvement this will yield is inconceivable.?It is actually impossible to understand how posthumans will think. And what about 1000 years out?? Will those beings be able to modify the laws of physics? Interact with parallel universes? Find a way to transmit information faster than the speed of?light? That's the scale of problems I'm guessing we'll be at.

What were our minds like 20, 50, 1000 years ago? I know 20 years ago I had hundreds of phone numbers, addresses and birthdates committed to memory. In India today children are still taught to multiply five digit numbers in their heads. In ancient Greece people would commonly memorize whole books and plays verbatum. Now I count on my phone to do these things. Whoa to the man who misplaces or breaks their brains..

Thank you for prompting this discussion. No doubt we will see a neuro-revolution over the next 100 years that could dwarf all other human advancements to date. Our increasing ability to interact with the mind, manipulate its volume, shape, aging, and functionality will yield incomprehensible returns. From allowing us to survive deep space travel, to warding off dementia as we hit our 150's, the next century will likely be remembered as the Neural Enlightenment Age, or something more elegant. Not only do we believe this to be inevitable at Longeviti, but it is exactly what we're working on today. Paving a path to answer these questions is our primary function in this historic adventure "Where to put new neuro-technologies as they occur, and how to incorporate them safely into our neural anatomy?"