Seth Shostak Quotes

The primary implication is that we're going to combine our intelligence with computers. We're going to make ourselves smarter. By the 2030s, they will literally go inside our bodies and inside our brains.

By the time we get to the 2040s, we'll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that's singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter.

Eventually there are going to be chips in brains. Imagine if you could just buy knowledge and download it into your head instead of having to learn it. Like in 'The Matrix.' Imagine all the years saved!

Who should have spent their money on a brain implant?

The idea that the mind can extend even beyond the body is an intriguing one, and is bound to become more pressing as we increasingly develop technologies that augment our natural abilities.

The song 'Paradigm' talks about nanobots - and how they can potentially be used to cure diseases and help you live forever. But how much of a human being would you be at that point? If you're 70 percent machine and 30 percent human, are you going to lose yourself?

Elon Musk is talking about silicon nanoparticles pulsing through our veins to make us sort of semi-cyborg computers. But why not take a noninvasive approach? I've been working and trying to think and invent a way to do this for a number of years and finally happened upon it and left Facebook to do it.

'Altered Carbon' is one of the most seminal pieces of post-cyberpunk hard science fiction out there - a dark, complex noir story that challenges our ideas of what it means to be human when all information becomes encodable, including the human mind.

We have always dovetailed our cognition to our tools, but when our tools start dovetailing back, where do I end and where does the tool begin? It is going to be a really Twilight Zonish situation. It is definitely interesting. Once Google is in a blood cell sized device in our brain, do we become part Google? There are certainly interesting things to think about and provocative questions, but I don't think those provocative questions are going to do anything to slow down the onset of these technologies arriving and becoming even more pervasive.

I think a few hundred years from now we'll start having the 'posthuman' era of different species.

Future generations will know there's nothing mystical about wetware because by 2100, Moore's law will have given us tiny quantum computers powerful enough to upload a human soul.

Everything good and bad about technology would be magnified by implanting it deep in brains. Is the risk of brain-hacking outweighed by the societal benefits of faster, deeper communication, and the ability to augment our own intelligence?

We're not that far from being able to plant images, memories, and emotional states directly into the brain.

We need to get used to seeing humans with antennas sticking out of their heads.

Andy Clark refers to humans as 'natural-born cyborgs.' What he means is that we habitually extend and change our body-concept without even thinking twice about it.

Eventually, brain implants will become as common as heart implants. I have no doubt about that.

I absolutely believe that a lot of the issues raised in 'Amped' about technology migrating into our bodies are issues that we're really going to deal with soon.

'Skinned' tells the story of Lia, a young girl who has it all - until she nearly dies and has her consciousness transferred into a robot body.

Implanting a microchip inside the brain to augment its mental powers has long been a science fiction trope.

There's an idea that, 'Oh, the more technology you have, or the more you modify your body, the less human you are.' I think that's super gross, and inaccurate, and also offensive to anybody who relies on technology to live.

As you go out to the 2040s, now the bulk of our thinking is out in the cloud. The biological portion of our brain didn't go away but the nonbiological portion will be much more powerful. And it will be uploaded automatically the way we back up everything now that's digital.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

The Internet of things will augment your brain.

We are going in the direction of artificial intelligence or hybrid intelligence where a part of our brain will get information from the cloud and the other half is from you, so all this stuff will happen in the future.

I would like to have my consciousness digitally preserved and housed in a pleasant place for later insertion into a fully functional cyborg when that's possible.