Matrix-Style Brain downloads 'will make lessons pointless'

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Link to the London Times Article

This would render all knowledge and learning utterly worthless. If no effort at all is needed, where's the value of education? Would degrees and diplomas become as personally significant as dog excrement? I hope this doesn't happen anytime soon. Do we want to live life or experience a life-substitute? In The Matrix, the program oppressed people's minds because they were being lied to about its actuality and authenticity. Like Neo, I choose the real world.

I can forsee many problems arising from this, both moral and health-wise. I reckon this sort of procedure could be potentially hazardous to your mental health.

There's a joy in learning, too--when you're taught something, when it finally 'clicks'--that you would completely lose here.

Sure, it may save time for the kids and teachers, but it'd be like driving a stake through your head: yes, there's something new in there, but in the end you've lost something pretty important too.

All valid points. I just posted the article, I never said it was a good thing.

But technological growth over the past 30 years has already led to increasing dehumanization, as convenience and efficiency has usually outweighed moral concerns. Automation puts millions out of work? No problem, we get cheaper goods and a few new jobs to service the machines. Genetic engineering and cloning in agriculture has the potential to destroy our biosphere? The long term effects on human consumption have been untested? Oh, but our food tastes so much better now that we can get steaks from copies of the best cows. Internet and cell phones have increased communication, but are increasingly turning even NT's into interconnected hermits. But now we can connect with people we could never come into contact with in real life. Now we have dating sites and MySpace. And WP of course. (In this case the good may outweigh the bad) But this increased communication has also helped enable outsourcing and globalization, with more and more jobs leaving countries that have a high standard of living for countries where cheap labor is plentiful. Thus lowering the standard of living for everyone in the countries with high standards of living while not increasing it in the poorer countries. That's ok, because we get cheaper goods and big corporations can point to huge profit margins as a sign the economy is doing well. Most people never realize the irrelevance of this because their profits do not help the economy of country of origin when most of their employees are elsewhere - instead of giving back to their local community like in pre-global economics, they are draining it. But that is ok, because all of our economies are so interdependent now that helping one helps all (unless one we are dependent on crashes, then God help us all). VeriChip has created implantable RFID chips that will make Orwell's Big Brother look tame by comparison. The eventual goal is a cashless society, where everyone's financial info and medical info is stored on those chips, and everyone can be tracked by GPS. It would take too long to go into details, but inroads are already being made towards this. Any sense of privacy we have left will be obliterated, but no problem, we'll be much safer now. (Safer that is, if you believe big brother is less of a threat to your life and well being than random terror attacks)

All of this is a backdrop to what has already happened or is in the works. So while all of the objections in the above posts and more will undoubtedly be brought up as it becomes closer to fruition, if the current trends continue they will be implemented anyway. Our kids will be further dehumanized, but that's ok because they will be so much more knowledgeable. Who cares if the program doesn't give them any sense of how to apply this instant knowledge?

I agree. Big Government is too big.

However, Small Government would be too small.

Personally I’d rather stab myself with a steel spork before I allowed that to take place.

If it ever did come to the point where they had chips inserted in the brain that contained all your infromation/etc... and it was recquired.... I'd become a hermit and live in the moutains. Failing that.... I'd likely shoot myself.

I can imagine kids saying, But Mom, I don't need to study, I will be able to download it in a few years. Its going to need a real leap in technology before an actual brain to computer interface is a reality, sure they have servo mechanisms for limbs or communication devices for the disabled, but that is only though nerve impulses. An actual matrix's like brain port would be impractical for the amount of data, the interface would have to be biological in nature, something along the lines of those game pods seen in the movie eXistenZ, or a Wetware type of technology. Even computers are going to need to be completely re imagined, along the same lines, able to manage or understand the mind, they may also have to be biological in nature.

on the technical side, learning isn't just a matter of putting information into your brain. New connections have to form between brain cells; essentially, the brain has to re-wire itself in order to retain the information. That's not something that can happen at very high speeds, no matter how accurately you zap the brain.

on the ramifications side, a lot of creativity and progress comes from the fact that a classroom of 60 students listening to one professor each learn the subject slightly differently, which results in 60 slightly different perceptions; if everyone downloads the same 'program' for a set of information, there will be much less diversity in the set of all-potential-ideas. In memetic terms, this would be the equivalent of incest.

Sounds like Harrison Bergeron.

Harrison Bergeron was by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, it is along the same lines though.

If it were like in the Matrix movie, where in their "real" world they could download all kinds of information very quickly for immediate use in the Matrix, I think that would be awesome. Of course in the real world there would be all kinds of things to worry about.

I don't think it would be the end of schools, school's purpose would change, but still be necessary. Once you learn something, most people need to use it or they lose it. Being told how to drive and actually driving are two different learning experiences, for example.

In school I learned algebra and geometry, but never used them in my life for any practical purpose and lost it, lost lots of other things I've learned but never used as well. So instead of school focusing on teaching me algebra, all school would have to do is focus on applying it in a meaningful way in my life so that I don't lose it.

Just a thought.

Do they even know the computer language on which the brain operates? If not, they may be stuck for a while.