The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives (Exponential Technology Series)

by Peter H. Diamandis

Charles Lieber, though, took a very different approach. To help regenerate bone, doctors often implant a “bioscaffold” into damaged areas to provide a support structure for new tissue to grow around. About five years ago, Lieber decided to try to build a microscopic bioscaffold made from electronics. He used photolithography to etch a four-layered probe one layer at a time, creating a nanoscale metal mesh with sensors capable of recording brain activity. After rolling that mesh into a tight cylinder, Lieber sucked it up into a syringe, then injected it into the hippocampus of a mouse. Within an hour, the mesh had unfurled into its original shape, doing no damage to tissue along the way. The result: Mouse-Brain TV. Lieber could monitor the activity of the mouse’s brain, in real time, in a living animal. The mouse’s immune system treated the implant as friend not foe. Instead of attacking the mesh as a foreign invader, neurons attached themselves to it and began multiplying.

Brain-computer interfaces (or BCIs) are the ultimate tale of convergence. They sit at the intersection of nearly everything in this book, including biotechnology, nanotechnology, and materials science—which, as we’ve seen, are rapidly becoming all the same industry. There’s also quantum computing, which gives us the ability to model complex environments like the human brain, and artificial intelligence, which allows us to interpret what we’ve modeled. And high-bandwidth networks that allow us to upload neurological signals into the cloud.

The leading proponents of this view are Elon Musk and Bryan Johnson, who have both created companies, Neuralink and Kernel respectively, to speed development along. But everyone from Facebook to DARPA has gotten involved. Facebook wants neurotech that allows you to think instead of type, replacing the keyboard with the mind as the ultimate social media interface. DARPA sees BCIs as a next-generation battlefield technology, and wants one that can record 1 million neurons simultaneously while stimulating a hundred thousand. There are also a multitude of startups crowding into the space, from health and wellness to education and entertainment.

The closest humans have come to a hive mind is the experience known as “group flow,” the shared, collective version of a flow state. Group flow is a team performing at its very best: an incredible brainstorming session, a fantastic fourth-quarter comeback, a band coming together and blowing the roof off the auditorium. It’s also considered the most pleasurable state on Earth. When psychologists ask people to rank their favorite experiences, group flow always tops that list.

Neuralink has a plan for a two-gigabit-per-second wireless connection from the brain to the cloud and wants to begin human trials by the end of 2021.

To be clear, there will still be terrorism, war, and murder. Dictatorship and disease won’t go away. But the world will quietly continue to get better. And, as we described in Abundance, the goal here isn’t about creating a life of luxury, but rather a life of possibility. Thanks to the forces of convergence, the technological advances needed for that world of abundance are coming at an ever-increasing pace. Of course, creating that world won’t happen automatically. It will still require the largest cooperative effort in history. And this brings us to our final question: What, exactly, are you waiting for?