RE: How Steemit Is Convincing Me That Becoming A Hybrid Human-Robot Might Not Be Such An Evil, Horrible Thing Afterall...
Imagine if you didn't have to sit down at a computer and spend hours typing out all the articulate details of the ideas in your head to form a well-composed article or book.
I have a couple objections to that and can see a couple problems.
First, even the most powerful chip set can't substitute for the work that the brain is doing, at its natural pace - that is, creating new content that is unique to you. That only you can dream up. Otherwise, the chip set is only converting data into words, like this sports writing bot. The only color commentary is preloaded by its human programmers. So you wouldn't actually be learning.
Second, unless you loaded your entire mind into the chipset, you'd fail to make new connections and deductions based on experience, which your brain helpfully throws up when exposed to new, but connected, information. You couldn't say, wow, that Tarzan movie really is deceptive, it makes it look like the natives banished the Belgians from the Congo, when in reality I know from King Leopold's Ghost that the horror and suffering went on for decades. And, I'm able to draw on all the other examples of imperial colonialism to contrast and compare.
What I'm getting at is the difference between information and knowledge. If you're still going to use the brain to come up with solutions, you have to respect the pace it works at.
Finally...there's so much pleasure to be had in reading, allowing knowledge to dawn on you organically (literally in this case). And some of that pleasure is difficulty. It should be hard for me to understand HTF Steemit manages to really truly pay all these $ out of nowhere, because of how rewarding it is to the brain to solve it.
Take away that reward system, and the brain atrophies, and all the knowledge in the world won't wake it up.
thanks for the contribution to the discussion. I've spoken to some of these points in a few of the other comment replies I've just been making - though the main emphasis I hope comes through them (which perhaps was underemphasized in the story itself):
natural, internal development would be required FIRST for any of these technologies to be effective. a person would need to achieve a certain level of internal development, acquiring a degree of wisdom and innate mental capacities/skill, before the external technology would be of any value.
compare it to a fresh computer with no programs on it - but a processing capability without limits.
on its own, the computer won't do ANYTHING.
the outcome is entirely dependent upon the programmer.
if someone's inherent coding skills are basic, the output of the computer will be basic.
if someone's an EXPERT, master programmer, they could create some AMAZING output.
the development of that knowledge & skills is part information that could potentially be uploaded, but for alot of that development, there is no magic-pill, quick-fix, or shortcut.
I view such technological potentials as discussed as that limitless-power-computer. for a master programmer - a dream come true. but to a complete newbie, essentially useless.
there'd need to be prerequisite development of consciousness and wisdom that couldn't be substituted with any technology - the organic development of specific neural pathways and activation of certain genetic codes - prior to the technology's potential to be activated. the tech could upload info, but it'd be the organic infrastructure that'd convert that information into knowledge and integrate it into the person's neural network, from which its interconnection would culminate in wisdom...