In the 19th century we saw more technological change then in the nine centuries preceding it; in the first twenty years of the 20th century we saw more advancement than in all of the 19th century. Now paradigm shifts occur only every four years. A good example is the World Wide Web, in which it was completely different then it is today. Since the eighties the World Wide Web had grown from 20,000 nodes to 80,000,000 nodes. It didn’t even exist ten years ago. The 21st century will see almost a thousand times greater technological change. Then we will experience a phenomenon called “ the singularity”- a merger between humans and computers.

The reverse engineering of the human brain will provide insights in building more intelligent (and more valuables) machines. By the second half of the 21st century there will be no clear disti

Noninvasive means of scanning the brain from outside the skull are rapidly improving, but the most practical approach to capturing every neural detail will be to scan it from inside. These are capabilities that we can only touch and feel today. The high-resolution that is required can only be accomplished (but not yet practical to achieve) through nanobot size technology.

The key to the above scenario is the reverse engineering of the human brain and copying its design. The immediate accessible way to do this is through destructive scanning. This is the process where a frozen brain is examined one very thin layer at a time. This way every neuron and every connection and every neurotransmitter can be seen. Human brain scanning is has already started. In fact if you can go to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_human.htm to see a scanned brain.

Texas Instrument is already working on a high-resolution projector that would represent a significant step toward nanobots. Once the technology makes nanobots

nction between human intelligence and machine intelligence. On one hand we will have biological brains vastly expanded by implanti

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