Short term memory is approximately 7 “bytes” big (where a byte is a is a pretty large thing, like a concept or a small thing like a number). It takes repeated exposure or “refreshing” in short term memory to move something into long term memory.

Long term memory is holographic in nature. This is why you can lose some brain cells every second of your life yet not leak memory like a sieve (although we do lose some things). Try it out on a holographic picture, cut the picture in half and you still get the whole image only at a lower resolution.

Long term memory has slow write access and fast read access. Short term memory has fast read / write access. This all has to do with protein’s ability to “flip” a logical gate between states. I think the book “Age of Spiritual Machines” explains that our processing speed is about 7 operations per second. We think so quickly because we have something like 10 trillion nodes and they ALL flip almost simultaneously.

I think that if we replace, neuron by neuron, our protein hardware with silicon hardware (They’ve done it in a lobster so we could possibly do it in a human) . Once we have silicon brains we’d “flip” gates at about 10,000,000 times faster and THEN we could actually utilize hypnosis or start using other forms of memory upgrades, plugins, etc to educate ourselves. We'd learn 10,000,000 faster as well which means about 60 seconds after you're born you'd be a PHD in several majors.


Here’s a link were protein neurons were replaced with silicon neurons, quite successfully.

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/alobster.htm

This link explains the STM and LTM operations in detail as well as how memories are encoded and how we “forget” stuff. (Looks like LTM leaks…).

http://brain.web-us.com/memory/human_memory.htm


Anyways, if the people at UCSD keep up the good work, I could amagine that they could begin to develop appliacations to enhance the memories of adults and children, and then use hypnosis, or, "memory upgrades." To think, in the future, school could be almost abolished.

Yep and we can all say to our children and grandchildren, "back in my day..................................

They can use that for criminals aswel, i guess. Put info in thier brain to be 'good'

It may be hard to accept for some people, especially religious. But we are on the way to transhuman, the transition to - post humananity. Everything in advanced technology is pointing us in this direction. If we dont upgrade ourselves then the problem is, Machines are always getting faster and more capable. When they reach our level of intelligence and speed, they will soar past it and we'd become the gold fish and they would be come the intelligence around here.

Although the problem with actually gaining all that knowledge when you are born, you lose your childhood .. possibly. But we never stay a child forever anyway and with longer life spans in the 21st century and beyond. Childhood will only be a very very small part of life.

Next time you want to learn a new skill, start a new hobby, you will need to pay M$soft first .

They could possibly do something good with the criminals with this, if they feel like they should. Also, I think that kids will still have a childhood, but it would be alot different. The intelligence and knowledge we would gain would make the world cleaner, safer, funner, and there'd probably be alot less missery. Besides, im sure people, specifically kids, will still be just as social.

If all knowlege was implanted in your head, how would a sense of self-worth be found?

This would create an even bigger rift between the economic classes- those who can afford chips and those who can't.

That could possibly happen. Although realize that with every technology, the price is usually high and you pay 100's to 1000x what it will be worth in a few years. The technologies will be highly experimental at first and the Rich will get them done and they will be the ginue pigs and will drive cost down for middle class.

I mean if you had a choice of

Being extremely intelligent or using the money to buy a sports car

Which would you choose?

I would choose intelligence, then from that intelligence you get the money to buy the sports car.

I'd feel alot of selfworth. I'd be happy to know that I could memorize facts extremely fast and without much trouble. Im sure that people with their new knowledge will do a great amount of good things for the world, and when they do, they'll feel self worth.