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Do we all need faster brains?

June 08, 2009 by Oratip Nimkannon

If you are one of those people who constantly keeps yourself up to date with online news, fashion trends, web gossip, Twitter, Facebook status, stock market updates, e-mail alerts, beware!

Some researchers believe that the digital age has opened a floodgate of information and is threatening to freeze our brains with an information overload, thus turning us into zombies with little or no empathy towards others.

One of the solutions, as we all know of course, is to ignore all the bombarding messages around us. But some researchers are suggesting that there should be a way to upgrade our brains. Yes, the same kind that we give to our computers, so that we can multitask and process information at an ever faster rate.

Here I quote from an article “Warning: Brain Overload” by The Times' John Naish:

Singularity is the term created to define the point at which machine intelligence surpasses that of human beings. Nasa and Google are funding a new institution, Singularity University, to explore this future. Salim Ismail, one of its leaders, says that we should re-engineer the human brain with computer-style upgrades. “The current system is flawed,” he says. “We need computer chips monitoring our neural networks. Evolution isn’t going to do this for us, so technology must do it.”

(Read his article and scroll all the way down to "Faster Brains"?

If we were to get a chip implanted in our brains, can you imagine what a mess that would be? How fast is fast enough?

I have always wished my brain could think and process information faster. But no, thank you, not THAT fast. I have a better method for a brain upgrade: meditation. Believe it or not, in stillness and silence, our brains can think and process ‘faster’.

QUO in Action

QUO CEO David Keen is speaking at the Thailand Tourism Forum - 2012 on February 2nd. Please visit The American Chamber of Commerce website for more information.

1 comment on this post.

Ron Edwards - Strategy Director

The floodgates are open. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I know I'm operating with a post-linear mindset. One solid line of thought with no distractions? No way! When you've got a million different things bombarding you at once, you have the opportunity to form a million different synaptic connections. You can come up with new ideas, shortcuts, interesting combinations that you would never have come up with otherwise. Multi-tasking can facilitate innovation. Besides, at this point in time, I wouldn't know how to operate without multi-tasking. Just counted the windows and tabs I have open on my desk top at the moment -- 32. And the other day I counted the number of books I'm currently reading -- 11. Still... keep the chips away from my brain. I don't think I want to process any more at once.

Thank you.

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