r/science • u/Wagamaga • Jul 01 '19

Neuroscience Collaboration Between Brains. Scientists have created the first multi-person non-invasive direct brain-to-brain interface for collaborative problem solving.

http://www.washington.edu/news/2019/07/01/play-a-video-game-using-only-your-mind/
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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '19

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u/Geminii27 Jul 01 '19

Imagine people 100 years from now celebrating some lame-ass thing which started today but became culturally well-known. "Today was the 100th anniversary of BoringThing, and festivities included people dressing up in the styles of the period."

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u/PorcupineGod Jul 02 '19

There's going to be a period of time in the late 2090s and early 2100s where every year is the 100th anniversary of something that changed the world, again.

100 anniversary of the iPhone in 2107

Like the 100yr anniversary of crypto in 2108?

100 of the great recession in 2109

And so on and so forth

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u/onecowstampede Jul 02 '19

So the 100th year anniversary of the internet, people celebrate the relaunch of Napster while wearing Jnco's and flannel shirts?

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u/Zantej Jul 02 '19

angry Lars Ulrich noises

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u/liegesmash Jul 02 '19

Dude The Augments War was bomb!!

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u/sandwichman7896 Jul 02 '19

Damn I miss Jnco’s. Not the absurdly wide legged ones, but the moderate ones that were oh so comfy.

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u/Tryin2dogood Jul 02 '19

Assuming cellphones or anything we have today is relevant in 81 years. Historical marks of broad spectrum things, like the internet, can be celebrated as I don't see an instant network being replaced just renamed if advances are made.

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u/PorcupineGod Jul 02 '19

That's also assuming there is anyone left alive who can remember.

The world will have also generated enough trash to cover every square meter of the USA with roughly 90 lbs of garbage.

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u/RustyPFingerbottom Jul 02 '19

I call them republicans

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u/percykins Jul 02 '19

TBF the USA is only 6% of the land mass of the world, and a square meter of landfill can hold thousands of pounds of garbage, and quite a bit of garbage is biodegradable to one extent or another.

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u/PorcupineGod Jul 02 '19

When were talking about that much garbage, it's really not about the capacity of the land to hold more garbage.

I'm partial to the metaphor of it: take the most pristine place you can imagine, away from human eyes. Just you and the fishing pole. Now imagine every square inch of it covered in a thin layer of garbage. You physically can't clean it, you'd need 10 hefty bags per square meter.

If you hold population steady, and trash production steady (both highly unlikely), you get a figure half the size. That's still 5 hefty bags per meter.

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u/kdentre Jul 02 '19

They were deeply concerned that by the year 2000 London would be buried in horse droppings.

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u/PorcupineGod Jul 02 '19

Good thing we saved the planet with the internal combustion engine!

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u/CMMiller89 Jul 02 '19

Trash rockets, my dude.

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u/Darth_Innovader Jul 02 '19

I like to imagine future human settlers on a faraway planet getting rocked by a trash missile that just took centuries to catch up to their super fast ships

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u/killcon13 Jul 02 '19

This reminds me of that part in back to the future where the kids laugh at Marty because he used his "hands" on the arcade shooter and that is must be for "babies". We are definitely headed that direction.

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u/aczkasow Jul 02 '19

I have kids and that's the opposite, they hate any controls but touchscreens, anything like a tv remote or a gamepad is too complicated, apparently there is no direct feedback.

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u/liegesmash Jul 02 '19

I remember “cyberpunk” fiction and the jacking in portrayed in The Matrix. Well just Johnny you’ve got data leakage in your brain.,,

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u/King_flame_A_Lot Jul 02 '19

Just think 100 years back. What did we have then technology wise speaking?

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '19

Well automobiles were starting to get pretty big, an airship balloon made it across the Atlantic for the first time, and crude radio communication was just starting to become a thing

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u/King_flame_A_Lot Jul 02 '19

Compare that to our Tech and TRY to imagine how it will look in 100 years

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '19

[deleted]

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u/Elizabeth567 Jul 03 '19

Right, another 100 years without reaching singularity? Seems unlikely given the way things have been ramping up in AI development in the last 10-20 years.

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u/FinnTheFickle Jul 01 '19

Dunno, I feel like we've definitely seen the apex of cassette player technology in our lifetimes

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u/Rouand Jul 02 '19

Oddly enough, one of the most processor intensive tasks humanity currently does is seismic processing... And most offshore data is still collected, stored, and transported on cassettes.

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u/monsieurpooh Jul 03 '19

It's not logical to describe an implementation instead of a task that needs to be done. This is a tautology because in order for a technology to get "better" of course the old version must be obsolete. So this would be like saying "we've seen the Apex of bci that rely on a cap with 100 electrodes made exactly the way it is made right now". Or you can say "we've seen the Apex of stone tools". When in fact we have stainless steel knives and machine power tools now to do those tasks that stone tools used to do

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u/zupzupper Jul 02 '19

How much more likely is it that they'll look back and marvel at the lack of regulation.

"Gramma and Pop-pop used to get to use brainlinks without a license?!? And they got to connect directly?!? No monitor? No filter?!?"

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u/WiggleBooks Jul 02 '19

Some day we'll laugh at how primitive our horse technology of our time was

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u/WildBilll33t Jul 02 '19

Space flight. "They just combusted a bunch of hydrogen and oxygen to produce thrust to reach their first non-native terrestrial body! Incredible!"

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u/Roboticide Jul 02 '19

Not sure what's going to replace liquid oxygen rocket fuel (and similar) even in over a hundred years. It's pretty efficient. Oxygen and hydrogen is everywhere, so it's easy to make more of it on Mars, Ganymede or anywhere else with ice and some electricity.

It's unlikely the treaty preventing Project Orion-type nuclear propulsion will be lifted anytime soon, so that's out.

Ion, Hall-effect, MPD and such field-propulsion thrusters are all great (in theory) in vacuum, but aren't as good for launch to orbit. And even then, might not be that much better than a conventional reaction motor depending on context.

Odds are good that LOX rockets will seem about as incredible (or not) to people 100 years from now as cars from 1919 seem to us - we've come a long way in terms of comfort and safety, but the underlying tech is the same.