Impedance Mismatch
For quite sometime now, I’ve been thinking and teaching how we could de-layer in software architectures, to achieve lesser impedance mismatches. Eg of this has been how data is stored in a database, and all we do is change it from one form to another, i.e.. from data in the database, to and object in an application layer(any language), to JSON to HTML. Think about this, aren’t we as software engineers supposed to do better than just parry around data and change formats of it, and call it as a real job?
However this actually got me thinking to another set of impedance mismatches. It is the process between the brain and the digital/real world. I was listening to Elon Musk at the Joe Rogan Show, and a statement he said blew my mind. “The brain is orders of magnitude slower in expressing an idea, as that needs to be formed into an appropriate language from chemical/electrical signals”. It is so true. Our brains also have impedance mismatches. We think in the language we have grown up with, then convert to English and then communicate. And as any conversion there are bound to be losses.
So what are the losses,
- imagine how today’s phone cameras each of them give a different output and also does not capture the reality of what is out there as how our eyes look at things
- imagine how hearing could be vastly different, if you wanted to tune into the rustle of leaves, you could and use your brain to interpret this directly.
- imagine the subtle tastes and flavours one could taste if we wanted to tune into it.
Today all the things we have done is have appendages to our body. A phone is the most sophisticated device of that. It is an appendage. People feel having lost a body part if they do not find it. However it is a prosthetic, not the real deal. The camera does not let me share the capture in the Himalayas completely.
What if these appendages slowly go into the body individually. This is just going to happen. Companies like neuralink would create the brain interfaces for it. Think neuralink as a very advanced API company, allowing you to call the API of the optic/auditory nerve directly. The appendages we have today to experience something need not be there.
It is not far off, the appendages we have will come onto the skin and then go below the skin. Some aspects would leap frog and go directly into the body.
Like how the Film camera is now a mobile camera, like no walkman exists other than your phone, like no journal exists other than instagram and twitter, and like now no television channels exists other than online content.
So will the phone camera become redundant to a chip on our optic nerve, so will the phone become a chip tapping into the auditory nerve and the larynx.
When the phone became the main device, tons of apps and companies such as Instagram, Twitter, YouTube came to the rise. Societies have changed dramatically because of these. So will societies change when we see the rise of neuralink like companies.
I see a day where my daughter will not fight to own a mobile phone when she grows, but would insist on getting a chip in her brain for her 16th Bday.
Till then 01001100 01101001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01010000 01100101 01100001 01100011 01100101
