Full Steam Ahead

Novel device records, senses and manipulates 'mini-brains'

Mar 2021, phys.org

Behold, the most hardcore scifi illustration you've ever seen. 

I call it the kufizoid, because I envision it as a hat we will all wear, and it will be alive on its own, and we will live with it in symbiosis as it instantiates our autopoetic anthropic amalgam of splinter-selves. You might call it an embroidered lace jellyfish biobot that sucks itself to your head to control your brain. But no need to be afraid; you'll love it. 

But what exactly are we looking at in this picture above? Scientists first made mini-brains-in-a-dish, and then created this kufi-probe, outfitted with electrodes, heating elements, oxygen sensors and light fibers to perform optogenetic experiments where they can control genes with light pulses. This probe-hat fits nice and snug right on top of that little brain bubble that lives in a dish. 

One day, somewhere between now and the day we become brains in a dish ourselves, we will wear these devices on our heads, to monitor and control our cortical activity, and to synchronize us with each other, so we can build a fully dematerialized anthroposphere, and live there happily together. 

But let's continue: 

This platform then enabled scientists to perform complex studies of human tissue without directly involving humans or performing invasive testing. 

-source: phys.org

Obviously the value of such a device is that we can study the human brain while it's not inside a human head. But in reading this, we get a glimpse of what this investigative approach will really do for us in the future -- we will use it in tandem with synthetic body doubles, running simulations by the billions every second, and in real-time, to aid us in planning and executive function. Your synthetic body double will be networked to every other person's double, so that eventually, all our doubles will become more and more enmeshed with each other, not in the physical world with all its physical limitations, but in the network, aka the anthroposphere, where the only limitation is the speed of light. And then, there will be no more doubles; we will become the double. 

image credit: Northwestern University

Post Script:

Cortical spheroids used to be called cerebral organoids, so it now sounds a lot less heavy on the ethics scale. You might call it etymological camouflage. And "engineered assembloids" is even better.