Brain Dump

Brain Dump

Article from Issue 99/2009

 

Dear Linux Magazine Reader,

I always perk up when I hear new information about the brain, with the hope that it will improve my own brain, or, at least, provide it some exercise. The brain has been in the news recently. All of our brains improve when we read about brains in the news: Slashdot covered it; the BBC covered it. The news is, they found a 2,000-year-old skull with part of the brain left in it [1]. No one actually has any hope of jump-starting this brain, but it is still interesting to scientists. The skull with part of a brain was found in a muddy pit, where it appeared to have been part of some kind of ritual offering. According to the experts, "There is something unusual in the way the brain has been treated … ."

You can learn a lot about a culture from how it treats its brains. The ancients Egyptians believed the brain was totally unnecessary for the afterlife; therefore, they extracted it through the nose with a long wire hook as part of the mummification process [2]. Closer to our own time, Albert Einstein's brain [3] was extracted in the hospital where he died by the pathologist who was on call for the evening. The pathologist took photos of the brain and later divided it in several pieces, storing the pieces in two large jars. He had plans to investigate the properties of the brain, or possibly, to get a brain expert to investigate it, but he lost his job at the hospital, and the brain was left in his basement until his ex-wife threatened to throw the jars away if he didn't move them.

At that point, he took the brain on the road, landing in Lawrence, Kansas – home of this very magazine – where he worked in a plastic extrusion factory. It was there that the pathologist befriended another famous resident of Lawrence – beat writer William S. Burroughs, who was fascinated with the story of the brain and reportedly bragged to his friends that he could "… have a piece of Einstein's brain anytime he wanted." An investigative reporter re-introduced Einstein's brain to the national scene in 1978, and since then, it has appeared in both pop culture books and scientific studies.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil and his followers believe that brains and computers will start to converge, and one day we'll all have virtual brains. The virtual brains will make us immortal because we will "… instantiate ourselves into our computer technology" [4]. When we die, our virtual brain will keep on executing in a futuristic form of cloud computing.

We are a practical magazine, and if Ray Kurzweil or one of his followers sent me a proposal, I would ask for some details. Will this brain be executing as a virtual process in a data center? Who will pay for the processor time? Will the data center send the family a bill each month for keeping this process running? What will this process do when no one is watching it? If the family does not believe the process is receiving sufficient resources, will they be able to check the process out of the data center and execute it on a futuristic home PC? Will the process care if it gets turned off and turned back on again? For a minute? For a year? For a thousand years? Will the process care if it never gets turned on in the first place and we just let this person with the virtualized brain rest in peace the old fashioned way?

Sometimes I wonder whether the future will bring new frontiers for the brain, or only more shades of the same old gray.

Infos

  1. 'Oldest Human Brain' Discovered: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7777385.stm
  2. The Mummy's Brain: http://www.jimloy.com/egypt/mummy.htm
  3. "The Long Strange Journey of Einstein's Brain," http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4602913
  4. Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines. Viking Press, http://us.penguingroup.com/static/packages/us/kurzweil/excerpts/chap6/ch6botframe.htm

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • Tech Tools

    TeamDrive 3.0 Released for Android and iOS

    JetBrains Releases TeamCity 7.0

    AMD Announces Radeon HD 7870 and 7850

    Altair Launches New HPC Tools

    GFI Releases WebMonitor 2012

  • Neural Networks

    3, 4, 8, 11… ? A neural network can complete this series without knowledge of the underlying algorithm – by a kind of virtual gut feeling. We’ll show you how neural networks solve problems by simulating the behavior of a human brain.

  • Writer's Toolbox

    When it comes to writing, using the right tools can free you up to focus on your content.

  • BOINC

    Want to participate in the scientific revolution? BOINC lets you lend your spare computer cycles to data analysis efforts for NASA and other science institutions.

  • Novell Nixes BrainShare

    Novell announced that BrainShare 2009 has been canceled. BrainShare has been held for more than 20 years, and the 2009 event was scheduled for March 8 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News