It seems tone-deaf for someone to be surprised that people are not generally on-board with what is seen as an exciting new technology. Tim Urban’s wait but why blog posted recently on Elon Musk’s new venture Neuralink. A bit into part 4, maybe 2/3 of the way down the post (in the style of his other Musk posts, it’s incredibly long), he shows a public opinion poll on brain chip implants that Neuralink will research and develop - more people are worried than enthusiastic.
But the same post got me wondering why anybody would be surprised at that result. Sure, people will always be wary of a big change, like Lasik, pacemakers, and other examples he gives. But this ignores another big important reason to be worried. Urban paints a grandiose picture of brain-computer interfaces as the next step in human intellectual development; how could anybody be against that? Well, consider books and writing systems - how much inequality was created throughout history based on literacy/illiteracy? If a new technology isn’t accessible to everybody, some people will get superpowers and some won’t. The ones who won’t will be the ones who are already behind. I feel that technology can create inequalities in this way generally, and the potential is especially high in this specific case.
Maybe I’m wrong. I’m making an assumption that affordability would be the big deciding factor in any cognition-enhancing brain implant. Regardless, it gives me pause when I see a certain lack of regard for ethical considerations. We don’t need to floor it all the time with new tech. I wish we took more time to make sure we aren’t ruining something when we take a new step forward.