Apple Is Reportedly Planning To Implant Chips In People's Brains By The End Of The Year
Dexerto – Over the years, Apple has worked to make its devices increasingly accessible to people with all types of disabilities and impairments.
A report from The Wall Street Journal says the Cupertino-based company is set to release its biggest accessibility feature yet, and it could come as soon as the end of 2025.
Apple is preparing to launch a way to control your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Vision Pro with your mind, but you’ll have to let them place an implant on your brain.
Apple has partnered with Synchron to make the mind-control happen. The company they’ve partnered with makes a stent-like device that is implanted in a vein at the top of the brain’s motor cortex.
If it reaches full release, the implant could make Apple devices more accessible to tens of thousands of people with severe spinal cord injuries or ALS.
Synchron said in a press release that controlled trials of the device will start later in 2025, but one user already has the company’s implant installed.
Remember when the show Black Mirror first came out on Netflix, and for the next year whenever there was news of new technology, people would say, "This is like an episode of Black Mirror". It became overused to the point that essentially anytime someone made a reference to the future, people replied with, "That is literally like an episode Black Mirror".
Well as overused as the Black Mirror reference was then, it applies to this now. Because since then, the TV show Black Mirror started running out of ideas, the show gradually got worse, and nowadays half their episodes revolve around the idea of, "What if we had a chip in our brain?"
I guess it's kinda bullshit to give Black Mirror credit for the age old concept of "chip-in-brain". Like that hasn't been everyone's idea of what the future might look like since the invention of computers. But that's besides the point. Today's news says that Apple is finally going to take chip-in-brain technology mainstream. And apparently it's going to happen before the end of this calendar year.
The way Apple has chosen to go about it is smart. They start by targeting people with severe spinal injuries and paralyzations that have rendered them trapped in their own minds. Prisoners in their own bodies. Living in a permanent state of, "Holy fucking shit please kill me now I am so bored I would do literally anything for even the slightest semblance of control in my life."
If that is your situation, then what do you have to lose? Why wouldn't you sign up for a chip in your brain? To be able to control an iPhone is truly all you need to live a decent life. I mean, there's obviously way more to life than that. But for those of us old enough to remember life before smart phones (crazy that's something I have to qualify now), when we were first confronted with the idea of a smartphone. Specifically one with data that you could connect to the internet with no matter where you were. The thought of that was crazy. When I thought about having the full scope of the World Wide Web available to me for the duration of a long car ride, I thought I would never be bored again. We've basically lived our entire lives with more things to do in our front pocket than the rest of human civilization had to do from The Book of Genesis [1:1] – approx. the start of the 21st century combined.
Which does beg the question, would you rather be paralyzed with a chip in your brain and full control of an iPhone in, say, 2028? Or be a functional human in 1870? I still think I'd rather be a fully functional human in any era. I would always prefer to be a participating member of society to the fullest extent possible. But for a guy born in the 1800's who struggled his whole life. Someone who worked his ass off from age 8 until he died of old age at 47 years old. I'm just saying... there were a lot of bullshit hardships people had to deal with back then. There is absolutely a case to be made that fully paralyzed chip-in-brain guy who can control an iPhone in 2028 lives a better life than the average Joe in the 1800's.
But the morale of the story is that Apple has officially begun the process of putting chips in our brains. Even if they're rolling it out in the most ethical way possible, they're still rolling it out. It's only a matter of time before chip-in-brain technology gets to a point that it starts to look pretty nice to those of us with four working limbs as well. It's only a matter of time before the government gets a hold of the technology as well. Keep your head on a swivel people. Brain chips are coming whether we like it or not.