Modern Sci-Fi Books and Their Apparent Obsession with Brain Implants

[Melbourne Guy]

My point is simply that it is not a replacement for human authoring. There will always be humans who desire to write.

Aha, then we're in heated agreement, @DaveC426913, my point was that professional authors will mostly be bots because they can overwhelm human authors in output. Anyone can write as a hobby (or fly as a hobby, good point), but why would I pay a person when I can have a bot write just as good a novel...or a thousand just as good novels?

 

[Lren Zvsm]

Though we already use neurological implants for certain special needs populations (e.g., cochlear implants for deaf children), I doubt that the use of brain implants will become widespread. Who would want to buy a computing device that requires brain surgery for maintenance, repairs, and upgrades? Imagine having brain surgery every time you needed a new cell phone. The expense and the risks would both be unacceptable.

I think that the glasses (and earpieces?) we see in books like Neal Stevenson's "Snow Crash" would be more realistic. What is more, our primitive mind reading technology (with MRI) might be made much smaller in a science fiction story about the future. Brain augmentation might be as simple as putting on a hat.

 

[DaveC426913]

Who would want to buy a computing device that requires brain surgery for maintenance, repairs, and upgrades? Imagine having brain surgery every time you needed a new cell phone.

Why you do think engineers would commit such an egregious design flaw?

 

[Algr]

Why you do think engineers would commit such an egregious design flaw?

Yea, imagine building products that stop working in a few years and need to be upgraded.

 

[DaveC426913]

Yea, imagine building products that stop working in a few years and need to be upgraded.

Haha. Seriously though, nobody's suggesting they won't cost money to upgrade - but that will be a software issue.

Future engineers would not design an implant that has a safety barrier to upgrading. That would be counter-productive to profit.

 

[Lren Zvsm]

Why you do think engineers would commit such an egregious design flaw?

Engineers would not create such a design flaw, but some science fiction writers would.

 

[DaveC426913]

Engineers would not create such a design flaw, but some science fiction writers would.

:frowns:
It's a bad science fiction writer that writes implausible engineering that the reader will see right through.

 

[Algr]

I want a brain implant.
I forget why.

 

[DaveC426913]

"What do we want?"
"Augmented memoryyyy!"
"When do we want it?"
"Want what?"

 

[Algr]

Engineers would not create such a design flaw, but some science fiction writers would.

Of course the engineers wouldn't. The marketing executives would do this. Planned obsolescence isn't something that could happen by accident. The implant itself isn't the danger, it is giving someone else access to how your brain works that is the problem. So in a healthy trustworthy society, it would be okay. In ours IDK.

 

[Hornbein]

Of course the engineers wouldn't. The marketing executives would do this. Planned obsolescence isn't something that could happen by accident. The implant itself isn't the danger, it is giving someone else access to how your brain works that is the problem. So in a healthy trustworthy society, it would be okay. In ours IDK.

In a healthy trustworthy society, it would be okay for today. But society is unpredictable. You can't know that society will remain trustworthy.

 

[Lren Zvsm]

:frowns:
It's a bad science fiction writer that writes implausible engineering that the reader will see right through.

And yet brain implants are not uncommon in science fiction and were a serious object of study for at least one scientist, Joe Delgado. https://gizmodo.com/the-scientist-who-controlled-people-with-brain-implants-5871598

 

[DaveC426913]

And yet brain implants are not uncommon in science fiction and were a serious object of study for at least one scientist, Joe Delgado. https://gizmodo.com/the-scientist-who-controlled-people-with-brain-implants-5871598

Of course.

The implausible aspect was the idea that the implant would need to be physically replaced regularly, like we toss away and upgrade our cell phones today.

 

[Lren Zvsm]

Of course.

The implausible aspect was the idea that the implant would need to be physically replaced regularly, like we toss away and upgrade our cell phones today.

Why would brain implants be more dependable than other electronic devices?

 

[DaveC426913]

Why would brain implants be more dependable than other electronic devices?

Because otherwise they would fail as a product.

No one is going to put a device in their head that fails often enough that it needs to be replaced with dangerous surgery. And therefore, no one is going to build and try to sell a device that fails often enough that it needs to be replaced with dangerous surgery.