(Newswire.net — April 7, 2017) — Inventor Elon Musk has played an active role in launching a new company called Neuralink, that focuses on developing brain implants which are connected with artificial intelligence and the Internet.
Merging digital space and human consciousness is extremely dangerous, according to a philosopher from Slovenia (EU) Slavoj Zizek, who criticized Musk’s brain implant venture. Directly linking brains of a population with digital space inevitably creates a privileged class that would maintain freedom of consciousness by not having brain implants.
“There is the first big question of power – who will be controlling this digital space? It’s a mega-political question,” Zizek told Rusia Today.
American scientist Ray Kurzweil believes the human consciousness will in the future evolve into some kind of a collective brain-singularity, but Zizek does not find this idea to be good because he believes that our individuality defines who we are and is what makes us free.
“The only question for me is – and we don’t have a good answer – how will this affect our self-experience? Will we still experience ourselves as free beings, or will we be regulated by digital machinery – now comes the crucial point – without even being aware that we are being regulated?” Zizek argued.
With advancing technology, the digital collectivism is open to the control of a third party. For example, social networks and smart-phone apps use private data you provide, in order to analyze your habits and steer you towards products you might want to purchase. There are numerous cases of data neuro-programing companies abusing you to purchase their goods.
Stepping further into the future, advanced technology that links brainwaves online and connects them to a digital world, would inevitably target our thoughts to force us to buy something we don’t need or, in the worst case scenario, to make us numb on the changes that would erase us as individuals.
“Never forget that attempts to control us always begin like this,” Zizek explained. “You begin with all these humanitarian causes, heart diseases and so on, and then sooner or later you move to police control. Even today, computers know more about ourselves than we do.”
The idea of collective consciousness in an advanced Hi-Tec environment is not a new idea. We all saw it in Star Trek episodes when humans meet a Borg entity. Half men-half machines which are described in the movie are merged into collective consciousness with one purpose only – to assimilate others, and to obey.