Notebook

Future Timelines: The Wiki

future-timelines:

• 2035 - A research group in Wales create bacteria in the lab that form crystals which resonate with radio frequency.
• 2041 - The same group demonstrates that they can modify a percentage of the glia in a mouse brain to resonate with RF, opening up the possibility for biological radio receivers.  These glia are dubbed “radiocytes” 
• 2043 - Examining data, the researchers find proof that the mice can respond to RF as a sensory stimulus.
• 2047 - Transgenic mice pass genes for creating radiocytes on to offspring.
• 2059 - Researchers in India announce that they have a “grammar” of radio signals that mouse brains interpret as information.  At the same time they show that these signals are only perceived by the areas of the brain nearest the radio receivers.
• 2060 - Radio transmitters are implanted in some of the mice.  Within 1 week, the implanted mice are communicating with each other using the grammar discovered by the Indian team.
• 2112 - The first humans to be born with radiocytes enter school.
• 2128 - The Wiki, a human exomemory, is born when a radiocytotic teenager discovers how to store and encode knowledge in an external repository.  
• 2131 - Radiocytotic people connected to the Wiki begin spontaneously sleeping only 3 hours a night.  It is found that the presence of unlimited external storage radically improves the brain’s ability to reorganize and consolidate, reducing the need for sleep.
• 2201 - 98% of humanity alive has either been born with radiocytes or has had them implanted through stem cell therapy.  Electronic devices can be controlled by a thought.  Experience, perception, and emotion can now be encoded in The Wiki as humanity refines its new abilities. No-one remembers what it’s like to not have the sum-total of humanity’s knowledge on hand. 
  

(via futurnow)