Google your Brain

Once upon a long time ago, there was a B-movie called I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name. starring Oliver Reed and an aging Orson Welles, and notable for the first use in a movie of a common four-letter word (once). But I didn't remember those details - I got them off the internet through Google. As everyone knows, people my age who were alive to watch that 1967 production now have difficulty remembering names of people and places - yet, when reminded, the memory is still there.

Google has a program you can download onto your PC to search your entire hard drive. (Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in Google, but I sure wish I did!) I predict that the killer app of the future will be the invention of a search engine that will allow a search of our brain's entire hard drive.

Wouldn't you, regardless of age, like to be able to call up every image you have ever seen, every page you ever read, in its context? This may not be as fanciful as it seems. It does not take a great stretch of the imagination to envisage a search program on a chip that could be wired to the human brain. With voice-activated commands, this could be turned on to search for images/1999/Joe/birthday, to find the video of what your retina registered on that memorable occasion. Or, when facing your road test theory exam, search on Text/manual/road test/New York/index to call up the relevant page.

Approaching you in the street is a person whose face you think you recognize but to which you cannot attach a name. You voice activates a physiognomy recognition program, which instantaneously measures 14 invariant key characteristics such as distance between pupils, ear lobe shape, and skull height-to-width ratio. Then, regardless of whether that person's hairline has drastically receded, or he has added or subtracted facial hair, it will call up the match from your memory bank, in the context in which you have most recently seen it, so that by the time you are within greeting distance you have name, rank, and serial number at your fingertips.

Or what about dreams? I once dreamed an entire new board game, complete with board design, pieces, and rule book. But I made the mistake of not writing it all down the moment I woke, while it was still vivid in my mind. After breakfast, it had all gone. I'm convinced that could I but remember the details, I'd make a huge profit in the Christmas toy market.

In the early stages of development, I suppose the program would reside in a wristwatch-sized microcomputer on the wrist or hanging around the neck as a pendant, communicating with the brain by wireless. Although this could, of course, be lost or stolen, there would be no danger of anyone hacking your memories, unless they had your voiceprint. Later, no doubt, one could opt for a thumbnail-sized subcutaneous implant, drawing its power from your heartbeat and using your eardrum for a microphone.

Some people might want a delete function, such as those who have suffered a terrible trauma that gives them recurrent nightmares. But there would have to be multiple interlocking fail-safe procedures for that, similar to those required for launching a nuclear missile, to avoid the accidental erasure of the brain's entire hard drive.

Speaking of deletion and dreams, however, leads us into an area in which individual rights could conflict with those of society. A witness to a murder might wish to delete that memory because it could implicate him as an accessory, but the police might claim a right to it. A person who was sexually violated might want to erase the memory, but the authorities would want it to aid in prosecution, to protect others. In a different case, would an investigator have the right to demand access to a person's memory when it might actually be to that person's advantage? For example, searching for the earliest memory of childhood abuse might prove that it was only a bad dream, or the result of a psychologist's well-meant but misguided attempt to help a child find answers by discussing possible scenarios. I'll leave the ethical implications of all this to a future column by Glenn McGee (see p. 26)

Jack Woodall is director of the Nucleus for the Investigation of Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Institute of Medical Biochemistry at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.