Education? What is its use today; and why do we value it so? We spend years learning the same information in order to ingrain it into our long-term memory. It is the inefficiency of the human brain's memory that requires us to attend school for 12+ years just to be competent enough to find decent-paying jobs. What if we removed the need for education? What would our world look like?
It is inarguable that computers (and the internet) are rapidly evolving at an exponential rate. In 2010, we have thousands of times more computing power than computer owners of 1990 had. In twenty years, this difference will be applied to the computer owners of that year. We possibly may see an even greater leap in computing power than ever before if quantum computing takes off.
As the internet increasingly gathers information to the point of containing virtually all of human knowledge in it, its use as a tool will become more and more vital to us. Eventually, we will have the internet more connected to us than ever before. Decades from now, we will have the internet connected to our brains, possibly through wireless brain impulse readers or other technologies. The point is, we will get to where memorization is irrelevant because the internet will provide us with the answers to the questions of our daily lives.
Imagine flying to another country, donning an internet-connected brain-machine device, and conversing with the locals of that country without ever having learned their language. Instead, you are using an internet translating service that immediately translates the words of the locals and reads your thoughts while giving you the your answers in their language. There goes those four years of foreign language you would have had in high school. Apply this scenario to solving math equations, economical questions, and any other task that requires non common-sense knowledge.
This future may be only 40 or so years away, soon enough to honestly contemplate what education's role will be once that happens. What will children do for the first 18-24 years of their lives? Will school even be necessary? Obviously, it would still be wise to build social skills in some sort of peer-interacting environment. Will these places be schools or just "playgrounds?" It may be that "school" will consist of learning how to use this brain-machine technology. (Another option is virtual socialization, of which I'll cover in another post)
Children will presumably not automatically know what a complex equation means in their head even if it is the right answer to the problem they were solving. Therefore, learning to use this technology would be similar to teaching children how to use the internet today, only slightly more complicated depending on the crudeness of the brain-machine device. This training seems like it would take much less time, however, than today's current curriculum takes.
Like the brain-machine devices that people will wear to replace knowledge memorization, mind clones will presumably have the internet at their disposal in their virtual world. These mind clones, with their faster processing power, will therefore be upgraded human minds. Besides logical knowledge, would a mind clone's superior processing power be able to analyze emotions more accurately than humans? If it could, that would completely alter the way humans interact on many levels.
Eventually, as mind clones and internet-brain devices advance, I believe that the mind clones will be able to "live" inside of humans through the internet, while physically being stored on super-speed servers. Once this merger becomes complete, we will truly transform ourselves into humans, version two. On another note, will we still call ourselves homo sapiens, or would a better term be homo techinus?
Related: Cheaper teaching, faster learning
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