PREFACE

BrainGate

IT IS IRONIC THAT MANY of humanity’s achievements are rooted in a history of mistakes. This was true of Einstein’s theory of relativity, many of the inventions of Thomas Edison, and numerous pharmaceutical drugs (such as penicillin and Viagra), and so, too, was it true of the most successful public offering in recent history.¹ Only weeks before Google’s initial public offering in 2004, the company’s founders made a critical error in judgment: they agreed to sit down for a magazine interview, something that typically is prohibited by the Securities and Exchange Commission (for fear that the information could be leaked or used to hype the stock). Beyond that, the interview was with Playboy, and that in and of itself was a bit troubling.²

But when SEC officials read the article, they dismissed it as harmless banter, clearing the way for one of the most successful IPOs in history.

Why did the SEC consider the article harmless? It was probably because one of Google’s founders stated in the article that people would someday have direct access to the Internet through implants in their brains—allowing us to have “the entirety of the world’s information as just one of our thoughts.” That alone was likely enough for the SEC to assume that the founders of Google were nuts.

But the founders of Google aren’t crazy. They understand both the Internet and the brain, and they know that an Internet implant could happen. The statement was forward thinking, certainly, but by no means foolish thinking. And as you read this book, you will quickly see that I share their enthusiasm for the convergence of the Internet and the brain. I even take their enthusiasm a few steps farther.

Imagine this: you are waking up. As your eyes focus, you see a white-haired man in a lab coat congratulating you on a successful surgery. You are still groggy from the anesthesia and can’t quite remember what happened. The man enthusiastically explains that he is a scientist and that your surgery has previously been performed only on rats and rhesus monkeys. But with the help of a neurosurgeon, it has now been performed on yet another animal—a guinea pig—and that happens to be you.

Before you can gather your thoughts, the scientist makes an odd request: “Could you please turn off the lights?” As you look around the room, you don’t see a light switch. But just as the thought crosses your mind, the lights go off. Smiling, he asks you to turn the lights back on. You think of it momentarily, and they snap on. He smiles again. “The brain implant has worked!”

If this scenario seems like science fiction, I assure you that it has far more science than fiction. In fact, this technology exists today. The scientist is John Donoghue, chair of the Neuroscience Department at Brown University. He, along with his colleagues, has invented an implantable device called BrainGate that allows people to use their minds to control electronics such as computers. Despite being one of those colleagues, I share your incredulity about this technology. I am still in disbelief.

I was introduced to BrainGate when I began my doctoral program in brain science at Brown. As I soon learned, the brain uses electrical and chemical charges to communicate with itself and the rest of the body. The idea behind BrainGate is actually quite simple: by tapping in to the electrical charges of the brain, doctors can position them outward to control other electrical devices, in the same way your TV remote allows you to change the channel without leaving your couch. After numerous animal trials (if you imagine monkeys running down the hallowed halls of Brown turning out the lights using brain waves, you will not be far off), BrainGate was approved by the FDA for clinical trials on humans. The immediate goal was to provide more mobility for those with severe dysfunction, such as quadriplegics and Parkinson’s patients.

Once I became familiar with these ideas, I urged one of Donoghue’s students to start a company. That company was quickly funded by a venture capitalist.³ It started human trials and quietly made its debut on the NASDAQ exchange a few years later.⁴ The first clinical trial in 2004 involved a paralyzed man who is now able to control a computer cursor with his mind. The lead surgeon, another professor at Brown, described the results as “almost unbelievable.”⁵ I suspect he added the word “almost” out of deference to Donoghue. Four other patients have since been implanted, all with remarkable success. The results were published in the venerable journal Nature in 2006 (Nature had published the animal trials in 2002).⁶

Why does this story sound outrageous?⁷ It is mainly because—as the doctor who performed the surgery has said—the idea is too hard to believe. We think of the brain as something beyond our comprehension, so we dismiss the notion that it obeys the laws of science. Here is the way CBS’s 60 Minutes put it when it featured BrainGate in 2008: “Once in a while, we run across a science story that is hard to believe until you see it. That’s how we felt about this story when we first saw human beings operating computers, writing e-mails, and driving wheelchairs with nothing but their thoughts.”⁸

The brain, however, is understandable. It is nothing more than a biological machine.

And that brings us back to the idea that the Google founders had. If we can implant a chip into our brains to turn on lights, can’t we also implant a chip that allows us to remotely connect our brains to the Internet? That would give us access to virtually all of the world’s information.

How would such a device affect what you think about memory? Would you still value rote memorization or be impressed by people who had photographic memories? Wouldn’t you essentially have a perfect memory, limited only by your ability to retrieve information?

If you were able to connect to the Internet, you would also have access to millions of people, possibly through “mental” e-mail, Facebook, or instant messaging. If you couldn’t find the information, you could ask someone, as if you were using a lifeline on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Would that change your notion of what intelligence is? Why value IQ when relationships are more powerful? After all, who is smarter when you have mental access to information—the person who knows all there is to know about quantum mechanics but nothing about nonlinear geometry, or the person who has close friends in both fields and just enough knowledge to ask the right questions? How would this kind of intelligence affect your personal life, your professional life, your business?

All this raises another, more important question: could the Internet itself be made to perform more like the brain? Could it perform the functions of a brain—just as a mechanical hearing aid performs the function of the inner ear, or a contact lens performs the function of the cornea, or an artificial heart performs the function of that biological muscle?

My conviction that the Internet is evolving into a brain has been the foundation of my business career. It has given me a way to anticipate what will happen next; it has given me vision. In many ways, because I understand the brain, I feel as if I’m seeing a movie for the second time when it comes to the Internet.

Why is this perspective important? It’s because you could spend your entire life trying to understand each of the thousands of Internet companies that have sprouted. You could analyze the permutations of each of them. But if instead you understand the brain—how thinking works—you will understand what is happening on the Internet: not only what is happening now but also what will happen in the future.

You may ask what you will gain by reading this book. My answer is this: you can take any phenomenon and study its parts for years, but until you step back far enough to see it in its entirety you will not understand how it works and where it may go. If you do not understand energy on a global scale, you will not understand the business by studying wires and power plants. If you do not understand international agribusiness, you won’t get anywhere standing in a field of corn. And this same principle is true of the Internet and the constellation of innovations and business opportunities that surrounds it.