According to the Daily Telegraph, the new chief executive of the Independent Schools Commission, a former Rear Admiral called Chris Parry, believes that "children will learn by downloading information directly into their brains within 30 years."
The article continues that Parry told the Times Educational Supplement: "It's a very short route from wireless technology to actually getting the electrical connections in your brain to absorb that knowledge."
Actually, it is highly unlikely that this will ever be a possibile. Downloading information to the brain, or, conversely, uploading information encoded in the brain to a computer, is the stuff of science fiction - Parry readily acknowledges that his prediction was inspired by The Matrix - and will probably always remain in that realm.
Such claims are often put forward by over-optimistic futurologists such as Ray Kurzweil, but it's not the kind of thing that one would expect - or hope - to hear from somebody who is in charge of educational policy at 1,300 schools.
Brain & Behavior
Education & Careers
Comments (11)
I'd agree that it isn't exactly the sort of plan you'd expect to see for educational policy. But now you've got me thinking, why can't this be done? What's the problem?
Certainly we can't stimulate the brain with enough resolution to form a specific memory, and we don't know exactly what to stimulate even if we could. But those result from a lack of understanding or technology, not from some physiological barrier.
Any thoughts on why you think this is very improbable technology?
Posted by: Josh | June 2, 2008 6:36 AM