Upgrade Your Grey Matter: A feed I would read…

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/18T_Q4SNoDk4MUjKc4pIFcBgjL_K3myASk5Y8vPmZJM4/edit#heading=h.hm5ldwnatupf

Feb, 23, 7.29 am 2027

I glanced up to see the visualization of another poor night's sleep as it gently pulse on the smart mirror’s translucent display.

I sleepily debated with myself about whether or not to sticking to the ‘sleep plan’ we’d agreed on as the bitter remnants of my ‘Nootropic Enriched’ toothpaste hit the washbasin.

'PING...'

A familiar female voice, still laced with the charm of not quite being human after all these years, chimed in before I could wipe the chalky residue from my lips.

‘Good Morning! … I found a 98% ‘idea match’ with one of your followers… would you like me to read the draft transcript?’

Maybe it was the ‘Noops’ kicking in, but my synapses were piqued.

I responded, enunciating correctly to avoid her repeating the question, and started my day the same as I had every day since I connected my second brain.

'P-LAYY TRANsss-SCRIPT...'

‘Yo wait, wha’d he just say?’

I first heard the lyrics nearly 20 years ago as they blasted from the knock-off Denon floorstanding speakers in my college dorm room.

A friend had brought round an album called Deltron 3030 for one of our ritualistic ‘first listens’. Buried among the pseudo-futuristic infomercial interludes one track intrigued my somewhat ‘hazy’ hearing.

Throughout four minutes of metaphoric acrobatics, Del the Funky Homosapien closed every chorus with a rebellious call from his fictitious future to ‘Upgrade your grey matter, ‘cause one day it may matter!'

I wore the aluminum coating off the back of my own copy of that CD. But Tthe line struck a chord and the words appeared on Post-it-Notes stuck to bulky monitors, scrolling screensavers on laptops I lugged around the world and more recently as the background on my mobile phone.

I’m not really a ’tattoo guy’, but if I’d overcome my hatred of needles earlier I might have been tempted to get this catchy one liner inked somewhere I could read it every day.

Matrix

In that iconic scene from The Matrix, Neo gets information downloaded into his brain, and all of a sudden he can do Martial Arts.

'In many ways, reading is similar to uploading knowledge. We take something that took someone else years to learn and learn it in minutes.'

Difference between -> Reading, Knowledge & Experience

Assimilation of knowledge

The idea of amalgamating, decoding, distilling, condensing and connecting ideas and skills into easily 'downloadable' brain upgrades. (CONCLUDE THIS) high tech archaeologists

Neuralink - REASARCH

Amazing and beating the path towards the future but the science is still a way off to be useful yet even with Moore's law in full effect.

EXPAND ON IT

There will be much turbulence during the early days of brain/computer convergence...

The Brain AppStore

I recently purchased access to my first networked brain connection in the form of a shared Notion document containing reading highlights on 300 books. And while there are obvious differences to reading firsthand and skimming another’s notes, my usage in this case would be to help decide what to read and when.

‘The purists in the house will hate on summaries. They’ll say you should only read first-hand sources, as if the knowledge you pick up in summaries doesn’t count. Though there’s wisdom in that perspective, they forget that summaries are an on-boarding ramp to reading the actual book.’ - DP

‘instant knowledge acquisition’ as the learning process is better suited to gradual adoption of ideas. (Apps like Blinkist etc)

As information expands at double-digit factors and as a species we need knowledge to be optimized and readily accessible for ‘just in time learing’ at a rate far closer to Moore’s law to ensure the future generations don’t end up drowning in data.

‘Synthesised’ knowledge accumulation and efficient parsing of data

‘Information wants to be ‘free’ but we pay for the skill of condensing it’

Leaning is not only the transfer of knowledge, it’s about the transformation in the mind of the

Google's great but it's not codified in a way to make it meaningful enough to draw conclusions fast enough.The networked second brain will allow us all to stand on the shoulders of humanities mental endeavours.

Weird Science

While my opening vision is likely a few years off, it’s already here in ‘kit’ form and needs only the gentle skill of a digital model maker to assemble.

With a few existing web tools and a little MacGyver-ing we could hack our own personal ‘Weird Science’ equivalent of the networked brain.

I’ve been feeding Evernote, and more recently, Notion, my favorite quotes, shower thoughts and three am brain farts for nearly ten years.

The results of this ritual are only now bearing fruit as I write pieces such as this, but what if we automated at least the first part of the creative process?

The ‘Recipie’

We could use Zapier, the duct tape of the internet, to connect Notion’s API with Google Sheets and pull in recent notes.

We could run AppScript code in Sheets to perform word frequency analysis on a note's tag or content to determine a relevance score.

When a topic on hits a certain criteria or an interesting intersection of ideas is found, we can use Zapier again to export the data and outsource the drafting process and research process.

With the release of ‘GPT-3’, the first AI program that uses artificial neural networks and deep learning to write like a human, a new category of software exploded, and I spent six months deep in an ‘AI Writing Tool’ beta-testing binge.

The results are impressive, but as with most things, the output is only ever as good as the input and you need to learn how to dance with the algorithm in order to help the tools overcome their obvious creative roadblocks.

It’s a great start and the data imported would be enough for something like Frase to create a well outlined piece complete with additional sources ready for polishing.

Finally, last year, I spent a mere two hours reading the Wizzard of Oz to my ever patient iMac with a towel over my head (aka. the poorman’s recording studio) and thanks to a relatively cheap tool called Descript and it’s ever-so-creepy ‘Overdub’ feature, I already have a 95 percent accurate synthesized version of my own voice.

In a refined system, with the eventual promise of cryptocurrency micro-payments and blockchain record keeping, we could monetize and be credited for our thoughts, comments and ideas throughout this process.

But for now my small step towards this future is a marketplace for the Networked Second Brain, and a call to action for anyone interested in duct taping this together for the sheer hell of it!

And remember kids...'Upgrade your grey matter, cause one day it may matter!'

Smart Mirror

Thanks to Sperzdechly, Alexandra Zamora and Michele Serro, Adam Zielinski, Chris Wong, Karminda, Karen C & Harriet Wombwell

https://medium.com/@harmonylion1/decentralizing-the-search-for-truth-using-financial-markets-648bf4408b5c

https://ideamarket.io/