Humanity and Artificial Implantation of Knowledge
As this site will host my viewpoints on many aspects of a future technological society or one that lacks such, I’d like to start off with an interesting topic — artificial implantation of knowledge.
Now, as the first part of a piece on the artificial implantation of knowledge, I’d like to ask you, the reader, a question.
Would you personally accept the offer of having knowledge be artificially inserted into your mind? (Unbiased, objective material)
If so, how would you feel if civilization as a whole had gained this easy access to knowledge?
There have been many instances where I personally have sat down to study and just wished that every piece of information, or at least what I am studying, could be inserted into my mind. I’m sure many of you guys have felt similarly.
Although this could be an easy fix, despite many not noticing it, knowledge has already drastically become something that is widely available — much more so than it was forty years ago. Not to the point of mental insertion, but to the point where there is virtually (ha) every general topic and resource at your disposal.
We, as people, tend to overlook the major changes that are constantly happening to society. So much so that (far in the future) if a form of inserting knowledge into one’s head was possible, it wouldn’t be too surprising. I mean — at that point, we would certainly already have reached a point of at least minor transhumanism.
In fact, it most likely would have to have been widely distributed to the public in some form, maybe as a device to help with memory. Then it would have to continuously advance, adding on new features every rendition, which is just how development works in general. We would be expecting it.
Humanity. What makes us human. You could say that this is mainly subjective, but when challenged with the idea of changing this pivotal aspect of us — knowledge and learning — most would agree that this implantation is stripping one of a pivotal aspect in human development and parts of their humanity in general.
But it could easily benefit society in certain ways.
Though, couldn’t turning every single person into a robot be beneficial? No more diseases, no more tiredness, no more overbearing emotions.
The answer is yes, it would be beneficial for society in economic, social, and environmental ways. So what are we lacking?
Technological advancement is constantly happening, and it is reasonable to accept that humans will most likely have progressive changes happen to them over time.
But if we constantly tear small bits of what makes us human apart from us, humanity would be turning itself into automation. If you haven’t already seen, we already are.
At what point are we not human anymore?
We all have an intrinsic fear of losing our humanity — our struggle, our imperfections, and even illness and death. This is what makes us, well, us. Reasonably so, many vouch for a happy medium between technological advancement and humanity. But this will be incredibly difficult. Knowledge implantation would be an example of why it would be difficult.
We all would crave it.
Even if there were measures in place preventing this destruction of our internal humanity, it would almost certainly lose in a battle against advancement. We want cures, we want eternal happiness, we want infinite knowledge and much more. Even if you think this worries you now, if people were to grow up and live in a society where all of this was distributed freely, nobody would question it. Not only because stripping ourselves of it could be anything from an inconvenience to something life threatening, but if you were growing up with it being the norm, you would hardly even have the agency to question it.
I mean, who would want to be the only person who doesn’t have infinite knowledge? Or who would want to be the only one without an iPhone? In the end, the similarities between the two are closer then expected.
I suppose my point is to somewhat encourage the acceptance of the inevitable fate — that a technologically run society is inevitable, but also to appreciate your current level of humanity before it fades into the abyss of automation (joking, but not really).
Mainly because humanity is temporary.
