“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” There was a long silence.

“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. “You’re welcome,” he said.

What worries me most about our world is the “long silence” in contemplating what alterations are possible to the human being via applied technology - “comfort,” in this instance. Just because human disease is regrettable, sometimes awful and horrible, does not mean that it is “bad.” And similarly, the mere fact that we have the capability of installing such a brain chip implant, does not mean that we should. Awful as the symptoms of the disease are, I’d stick with the perils of Alzheimer’s over the implant - it’s the right to preserve the integrity of the (natural) decline of the body.

(NB: I’m not against medicine, nor am I pro-syphilis!)

For a long time, researchers thought that Alzheimer’s Disease was caused by a buildup of amyloid beta plaques in the brain - essentially the brain making too much of one protein and clogging itself up. Recent research has called into question this hypothesis, since the plaques may be a corollary symptom of the disease, rather than the root cause. Either way, an Alzheimer’s patient inhabits damaged (or dead) brain cells that no longer function both in retaining memories and recalling them. I’m no doctor (or Alzheimer’s researcher for that matter - throw me a malaria question sometime!), so I don’t know for sure, but I’m skeptical that computer augmented memory could actually help someone with this disease. If a patient don’t have any more neurons in an area, then it would be hard to augment those neurons with a computer. For more information on Alzheimer’s, see http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/alzheimers-disease/DS00161.

However, I believe that a cure for Alzheimer’s will come before we all implant computer chips in our brains.

Marcus, in his article, is careful to point out that the implant he speaks of would serve only as a map, not as a protection against loss of memory or as an “external hard drive,” so to speak. It would be to the brain what Google Desktop is to your computer: a means of creating a rapidly searchable index of its contents.

If such a device can help people who otherwise cannot recall their memories, then I’m all for it! But as an enhancement to a normal, healthy brain, I’m not so sure such an implant would be in our best interest as humans.

This also brings up another controversial angle: let’s say the implant could assist Alzheimer’s and other patients with memory-related ailments, but an the implant could only map memories as they are recorded in real time? So, an implant becomes a prophylactic, and everyone gets one “just in case.” Do the benefits of preventing potentially debilitating memory problems down the road outweigh the potential costs of changing the way we use our minds today?