I’ve said before that we are all cyborgs. Our evolution from Homo sapiens to Homo machina is already underway.

One way this evolution could develop is that people start to get brain chips. Brain chips would help make people better and smarter.

You’re in an interview and you get asked a question. Your brain chip instantly connects to the web and searches for the best way to answer the question. Initially, there might be some lag in getting the info but over time this would become less and less noticeable.

You could argue that this is already happening. We rely on our own memory less as we can Google it. We don’t need to know how to do things anymore. We just need to know how we can find out how to do something. Don’t know the appropriate HTML code to use in your project? There’s no need to work it out. Just look it up!

This is of course nothing new. People have always been outsourcing their brain function. We’ve used books and libraries to store information so we don’t have to forget it.

Outsourcing brain function is not confined to technology. We also outsource to other people. You see this most evidently with couples. Over time one in the partnership takes on certain roles. It might be that one always looks after the passports on holidays. It might be that the one always looks after the finances.

Society is simply an expansion of this. None of us need to know how to do everything. We can rely on others to know how to do things we don’t. They rely on us for other things. We humans outsource so many things so that we don’t have to take up brain space with them. It allows us as a species to do so many more things than any individual.

Outsourcing to Google is a natural extension.