brain vs computer

Okay so here is the scoop. Lately, I've been reading news articles about how technology is advancing so rapidly that by the year 2050, we're supposed to be able to download our entire consciousness into our laptop computers. Thats right- just plug in your brain, and apparently you can download your memories and all the data in your head.

So what's wrong with this?

First of all, the brain doesn't store information in bits and bytes. The brain is not a digital storage system. The brain, and more importantly -the mind, is holographic in the way that it stores and retrieves information. Also- the information that the brain stores isn't even really stored with perfectly accuracy anyway. Our perceptions are distorted- peoples' memories are distorted. They're fuzzy. They can be created in a second, so it's not like you have a databank in your head that's just sitting there waiting to be downloaded. All the memories and perceptions in your head are shifting around all the time. What you think you remember today may not have happened that way at all. In fact, usually very little of what you remember actually happened that way.
In other words, we don't see reality. We experience a very tiny interpretation of the world around us. The universe out there, and what's encoded in our head, is really just an experience. It is a holographic representation of various sensory inputs, emotions and experiences at that time. It is not like a zip file. You can't just download it into a computer or slap it onto a flash drive.

So I don't care how advanced computing technology gets, you're never going to be able to just download your memory like a giant storage file, because it's not stored that way. Your brain is not a giant flash chip.

But what if we were able to download our brains into computers?

It sounds great in terms of technology, however what about the social and political implications of this? What would it mean? Would it mean that if you were suspected of committing a crime, the courts would force a download of your brain? Would it mean that your memories and thoughts were no longer your own?
If it did mean that, then, of course, we'd have an era of thought crimes -an era where it could be criminal to think the wrong thoughts or have the wrong memories, or just to have the wrong imagination. If you happen to have the wrong images pop up into your head, and it gets downloaded onto the computer, all of a sudden, you're a criminal. You're an enemy of the state. Why? Because you don't fit the norm. Because you have ideas that they consider to be a threat to their stranglehold on power. You've got to think about these things. Technologies can be promising, but they can also be very threatening, not only to our sense of who we are, but also to our security and privacy as individuals and our very freedoms.

Ultimately, I don't want to see a world where a bunch of computers are looking into our heads. I hope to see a world where individuals examine their own minds. That to me would be the most amazing breakthrough of all.