You check your smartphone so often that it might as well be a part of your body. Why not skip the tiny screen and keyboard and put your brain directly on the Internet?
Photograph of science writer Michael Chorost. Image used by permission.
On Wednesday March 20th, 2013 from 11:30-12:30 the Science, Technology, and Business division is sponsoring the lecture How to Put Your Brain on the Internet with science writer Dr. Michael Chorost in the Mumford Room, 6th floor of the James Madison Building , Library of Congress.
In this provocative and entertaining talk and book signing, author Michael Chorost will show emerging technologies that allow brain activity to be read and altered in unprecedented detail. He’ll outline what a future “World Wide Mind” could look like and ask: would you want to be part of it? The talk will include audio simulations of what Dr. Chorost hears as a cochlear implant user and videos of cutting-edge neuroprosthetic technologies.
Dr. Michael Chorost is the author of World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet (2011) and Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human (2005). Between books Chorost freelances for Wired, New Scientist, Technology Review, and other magazines. He makes frequent radio and TV appearances, and has given 130 lectures at places such as Google, MIT, Brown University, and Duke University. Totally deaf since 2001, Dr. Chorost now hears with two cochlear implants.
Chorost’s first book, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human (2005) is a memoir about going deaf and getting a cochlear implant. It won the PEN/USA Award for Creative Nonfiction in 2006 and was applauded by the L.A. Times as “the first cyborg memoir.” His second, World Wide Mind (2011) is about the science of mind-reading and the prospect of enabling direct communication from one brain to another.
Chorost is a graduate of Brown University and holds a Ph.D. in Digital Humanities from the University of Texas at Austin. He first worked at dot-com in San Francisco and then at SRI International, a research institute in Silicon Valley. The second job led to coediting Educating Learning Technology Designers: Guiding and Inspiring Creators of Innovative Educational Tools (2008). Since 2005 he has worked full-time as a freelance writer, speaker, and teacher. He spent the 2008-2009 academic year as a visiting professor at Gallaudet University in Washington,D.C.
For more information about this lecture call 202-707-7450.
Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov