Just imagine a world where all the known computing gadgets, I mean all gadgets that do some form of computing, is taken away. Where does the world land? It lands right back at the boundaries of Industrial era transitioning into computing era.
Given the computing and connecting, at their dizzy speeds, define the early part of 21st century, the very absence of the same defined the early part of 20th century.
The connectivity paradigm lands you into the conditioning paradigm. The way you want to live or would live is conditioned by the gadgets you own or use. This conditioning is depriving you of the very essential learning that landed you in the 21st century the way it got shaped because of advances made in computing and connectivity.
Doesn’t it make you wonder what you do is so conditioned to what you need to use to deal with the world you landed in, you as an individual have ceased to exist when it comes to learning?
The question is not philosophical or scientific. The question is for you to ponder on the ideas that the learning at its core need not change, but should adapt to the emergent technologies of the 21st century.
That’s exactly the difference between the science of artificial Intelligence(AI) and Neural Engineering(NE). AI works on how to provide the best possible response (rule-based) to a stimulus whereas NE heavily depends on iconic learning methods for a best possible respones (computations through learning rather than programming).
So the question is if AI generates a lot of interest in programming the mind, should NE generate a lot of interest in learning the mind first? If so, should we start talking about brain, mind, matter, neurons, cybernetics and what nots early in the stages of our learning process?