Imagine For A Second You Were Transposed Into The Karmic Driven World Of Earl. Just Like In The Matrix Movie Nearly Two Decades Ago, Where A Bunch Of Cables Were Placed On People’s Heads, And They Were Able To Learn Different Skills Through A Smart App. 

In the future, we will experience similar technology directly from the Internet with the help of a nerve implant placed in our heads. Realizing such an idea requires using brain-computer interface technology, an advanced and intelligent language chip that may locate behind the corners and near the cortex. It acts as a processor and as a modem chip. It works and can receive language flow signals.

It is what the near future is all about in the science fiction book The End of Sleep. But such a possibility is not limited to science fiction shortly. However, we need constant research and many experiments to connect the human brain to computers to achieve such a day.

Such technology raises several ethical questions, such as the potential for the use and misuse of brain chips by some large technology institutions or companies. As predicted at The End of Sleep, the potential for brain hacking remains long.

However, what is clear is that ultimately, brain implants, which affect a vital element of being human, namely language, have far-reaching consequences for the human experience, including the way we think, feel, learn, and interact with each other. It has the world around us.

Psychological benefits of language learning (s)

In the English-speaking world, where English is so widespread globally, it is assumed that everyone speaks only one language, their mother tongue. But this is not the case in the real world, and many countries have a language that is very different from English in terms of writing and grammar.

It has led some people living in different countries to learn one or more languages ​​other than their mother tongue. Speaking two or more languages ​​- bilingual or multilingual – is often recognized as the norm.

More than half of the world’s population speaks at least two languages ​​and often more.

And in Johannesburg, South Africa, for example, it is common for many people to speak five languages.

It has been psychologically well established that speaking and learning another language brings significant benefits to our brain capacity beyond the obvious practical benefits of being able to communicate more widely.

Speaking two or more languages ​​makes you smarter – from a better ability to understand new skills to an improved ability to focus and solve problems. In addition, it improves memory and protects the brain from serious issues such as dementia in old age.

Bilinguals are less exposed to the cognitive impairments of life than their monolingual peers. For example, Professor of Linguistics John McWhorter, a few years ago, in Ted’s lecture, presented four solid reasons for learning a new language and showed why learning new languages ​​has valuable benefits for individuals.

Can technology be a substitute for language learning?

The short answer, at least according to Ilan Musk, is yes. In 2016, Musk and a team of experts in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and technology established a company active in neuroscience called Neuralink. The company specializes in developing brain-implantable brain-computer interface chips.

In the first place, Neuralink works on a technology that allows paraplegic people (with complete paralysis of the legs and trunk on both sides) to click a mouse or use a smartphone without having to move a large device with a computer. While human experiments have not yet begun, the technology involves implanting computer chips in the brain that, at least in principle, allow wireless communication with external computers.

Brain implants are not a new technology. Research on human nerve implants dates back to the 1970s.

Such implants act as biomedical prostheses in stroke or head injury cases. Other uses include implants that provide deep brain stimulation functions in cases of Parkinson’s disease or even to treat depression. They do not get much attention from companies.

But what is entirely new about Neuralink is that Ilan Mask’s goal is to use brain implants beyond medical treatment and, in fact, to enhance the human experience in a variety of subjects. One case in point is language.

 Ilan Musk recently claimed that brain implants could soon end old-fashioned language learning.

He went so far as to claim a few years ago that perhaps in the next 5 to 10 years, all human beings would speak a single universal language using brain implants so that communication would be more effective and easier than before.

While the claims and predictions of the mask have a history of not being realized, at least within the predicted time frame, what will be the psychological consequence of this?

Suppose the technology to solve the language learning problem becomes available in the future, as predicted in The End of Sleep. In that case, we will be able to use technology to transmit language directly to the mind. But what does the above achievement mean for the way we communicate, and what does it mean for the way we think, feel and experience the world around us?

Semantic nature

The primary function of language is to facilitate communication. Language does this well by encrypting and transmitting concepts – thoughts and ideas to the outside world. We can communicate with people by transforming the amorphous thoughts locked in our minds into something we can verbally or signify (written or typed text, signed gestures, etc.).

We use language to convey ideas. In this case, we can get our “ideas” to different people in the real world. Psychologists refer to this primary function of language as a sign of the intention to communicate. But by default, we can refer to this process as a meaning transfer.

But over the past few decades, extensive research has been conducted in the field of psychological sciences that shows that the meanings transmitted by language are rooted in the world of our lived and everyday experiences.

For example, when I say “hammer a nail into a stick,” or more accurately, “hammer a nail into a stick,” we understand the meaning of these words to some extent by activating the motor areas of our brain that know how to hold a hammer and hit it.

How does the nail feel?

In other words, language comprehension involves activating the visualization experience of the situation that words are supposed to convey. In short, the meaning associated with terms is not something abstract. It depends on what is technically known as the visualized simulation of the action or experience that the words convey.

Psychologically, given that the meanings transmitted by language depend on actual experiences, the same brain states that encode lived experience raise the question of how words implant our brain if the words are not related to those concepts. Do they facilitate language? If linguistic concepts are transmitted through a computer, perhaps from the Internet, in the form of invisible signals, where does the meaning of the words come from it?

Difficulty understanding symbols in meaning

In the psychological sciences, this issue is known as the problem of symbolic contextualization of meaning. The words of beings are not abstract. They can use to do things in the world – because of the implications associated with them – to make us love, to persuade us to buy a new product or to make someone laugh. But if we load language on a computer, the problem is, how do we convey concepts and emotions in a way that has a long-term effect on our minds?

When you go to a language class, the teacher first tells you that English sentences have their melody, and you should not say an emotional, questionable, or surprising sentence with a fixed piece. Like your mother tongue, be more precise; your speech should have a high and low tone so that you do not speak like a robot.

Psychologically, brain implants simplify language use, and language learning inevitably changes the nature of language and communication. They also change the nature of meaning and, in the process, the importance of being human. If such technology were to be available one day, would it still be desirable to use it according to our expectations, given its problems?