Our Books

I read Mellie’s latest blog about how our house is filled with books and it made me smile.

http://thursday-ish.blogspot.com/

Some of the stories I read (and write) are a little fatalistic. I do wonder from time to time how we would cope if the lights went out. I mean really out. No electricity and no hope of it coming back for a long, long time.

While I was sitting at home eating lunch, casually pondering the end of days, I began to look around me and realized we don’t have a problem. I saw a book on soap making! Then it struck me, we absolutely do have a Library.

Want to know how to paint or draw? Yeah, we have books on that. How to write? Please! A whole section that’s just reference books. Books on aircraft? Check. Chemistry? History? Politics? Check. Space program…Mercury, Gemini, Apollo? Check. Cook books? Pshhht. And I haven’t even gotten to the fiction yet.

Like Shakespeare? We have them broken down by tragedies or comedies or you can borrow the complete collection in one volume if you prefer. I can eye Dickens to Tolstoy to Hemmingway to Twain. Historical fiction, science fiction, romance, mystery and just plain silliness (may Douglas Adams rest in peace, like a Vogon on Pan Galactic Gargleblasters doesn’t.)

I know in my heart that an iPad, or any electronic device like it, will never replace a book. There is something about how a book feels and even how it smells. I have a book in my desk at work. At home I have one by the bed, by the chair where I use the computer, and in my car. Some of you reading this know what I mean. I know you go to Walmart or Costco and you can’t resist cruising down the book isle. And you never get out of Borders or Barnes and Noble without buying something!

One of my best friends complimented me the other day by saying I was one of the smartest people they know. I don’t think I’m all that smart. I think I’m just well read. It’s part of the “using not only all of my own brains, but also all of the brains of those around me” idea. I have a house full of the brains of lots of smart people (and a few smart-alecky ones).

The Mind Machine

What if you could get your mind to do things you had once thought impossible? How would you feel if it took technology to do it? A debate we have had at our writers group is if the technology existed to enhance you mentally or physically, would you use it?

Many of us agree, the majority of people would. Why? Because it’s human nature to want to be better or even as good as we once were.

As you get older your memory starts to go. No ones fault, it just happens. So imagine if you could make an appointment with your doctor and for a fee have the equivalent of computer memory implanted in your brain. You might find your insurance even covers it. The way they see it, if you always remember to take your medicine, you don’t get sick as often. You have perfect recall and the insurance company gets to collect premiums and not pay out as much.

Or, more painfully, a water skiing accident snaps your spine. You live but your body is no longer functional. You can’t even speak. Would it be some kind of miracle to have the technology available that would read your thoughts and through a computer allow you to communicate, perhaps do even more?

In 1982, Clint Eastwood, starred in and directed a movie called Firefox. The movie was about an American pilot who goes to Russia to steal an aircraft that contains a “neural” interface. It allows him to arm and launch weapons with only a series of thought commands. The movie was a bit lame but the idea it presented 28 years ago is quite amazing.

That was then.

What is the possibility of a mind/machine interface? I recently watched a video that sent me down a path of wonder. A woman named Tan Le is part of a company that has developed a Mind/Computer interface. (Look her up on Wikipedia and check out her TED Talk.) She demonstrated a simple headset (one that could read brainwaves -- EEG) and some software, that allowed a person to quickly manipulate objects in a virtual environment using just their mind. Imagine for a moment what that could mean. It starts with computer games where you can move objects and characters just using your thoughts. That’s how they introduce it because that will reach around the world and that is where the money is, but that is not the real power of this invention. In my waterskiing tragedy above, that person could communicate and even use a wheel chair just through mental commands and facial movement.

While watching this short video I imagined a myriad of possibilities (both good and bad) that this technology represents. I need to go now and write them down – since I don’t have that perfect recall implant…yet.