{"id":263,"date":"2011-06-20T09:13:55","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T07:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/?p=263"},"modified":"2011-06-20T09:13:55","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T07:13:55","slug":"good-news-and-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/?p=263","title":{"rendered":"Good News and Bad&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, first the bad news:\u00a0 all you people playing video games non-stop are screwed.\u00a0 Apparently <a title=\"Scientists Discover Brain Atrophy in Internet Addiction\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=does-addictive-internet-use-restructure-brain\" target=\"_blank\">playing extensively shrinks your cognitive brain<\/a>.\u00a0 Sorry, that\u2019s pretty rough.\u00a0 I mean, at least playing while drunk won\u2019t\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Oh, crap.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, so all those folks you know who spend twelve hours a day while wasted, get about four hours of sleep, and then work just long enough to feed their addiction?\u00a0 They\u2019re literally playing their brains smooth.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, on the upside, <a title=\"Successful Invention of a Section of the Brain\" href=\"http:\/\/m.smartplanet.com\/blog\/thinking-tech\/the-matrix-reality-scientists-successfully-implant-artificial-memory-system\/7436\" target=\"_blank\">scientists have created an artificial hippocampus<\/a> \u2013 on a chip \u2013 and used the model on rats.\u00a0 (The hippocampus is the part of our brain organ that is responsible for the formation of memory.)\u00a0 They planted the chip in these rats, and then used drugs to suppress the natural hippocampus.<\/p>\n<p>And it worked.\u00a0 The chip-based module replicated the brain\u2019s natural function.\u00a0 The rats learned and had memory as if there was nothing askew.<\/p>\n<p>Now we\u2019re a long way from replicating the memory-formation of \u201cpress this to get food\u201d and remembering <em>Lord of the Rings<\/em> and having that replicated, but this is a BIG first step in that effort.\u00a0 Highly cool.\u00a0 I suppose there\u2019s a downside if you\u2019re a half-empty sort:\u00a0 this is also a major step in having a \u201clive\u201d mind within silicon \u2013 we\u2019re a step closer to SkyNet or ViKi\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, first the bad news:\u00a0 all you people playing video games non-stop are screwed.\u00a0 Apparently playing extensively shrinks your cognitive brain.\u00a0 Sorry, that\u2019s pretty rough.\u00a0 I mean, at least playing while drunk won\u2019t\u2026 Oh, crap. Okay, so all those folks &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/?p=263\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264,"href":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}