Appendix

Predictions, acknowledgments, resources, and the modality map.

Appendix A: Predictions to Revisit

Appendix B: Friends and Thought Partners

This manifesto did not come to life in a vacuum. The people below have shaped how I see this field over years of conversation. Each, at some point, moved the thinking forward. The smart claims are theirs; the errors and overclaims are mine.

One person holds a special position here: my partner Olya, who read every draft, caught what did not work, and refused to let this sit in my backlog for another two years. It exists in finished form thanks to her.

Appendix C: Further Resources

I mentioned a lot of companies and labs throughout the essay. I am consolidating the ones worth keeping an eye on here, for anyone wanting a bird’s-eye view of the field.

In addition to companies, here is a list of write-ups for anyone wanting to go deeper into neurotech:

Appendix D: The Modality Map

A reference breakdown of the modalities named throughout this manifesto. The interactive comparison is in the modality mapThe modality map⁠▸; below is each modality in detail:

Appendix E: Glossary

ALS

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Progressive motor-neuron disease; one of the conditions BCI work has historically focused on.

Bandwidth

How much information you can send and receive per unit of time.

Bandwidth gap

The vast mismatch between how fast machines can think and communicate, and how slowly humans can process information.

BIDS

Brain Imaging Data Structure. A community standard for organizing neuroimaging data (MRI, EEG, MEG) in a uniform directory layout. Adoption is still uneven.

Connectome

The full wiring diagram of a nervous system: every neuron and every connection between them.

Diffusion models

Image-generation models that learn to reverse a noise process: start with pure noise, denoise step by step into a coherent image.

Dura mater

The tough outer membrane enveloping the brain and spinal cord. Semi-invasive devices sit beneath the skull but rest on top of this layer.

EEG

Electroencephalography. Reads voltages off the scalp. Cheap, ubiquitous, noisy.

Endovascular

Electrodes delivered through blood vessels rather than open craniotomy.

Exocortex

An external digital layer of your mind that extends your memory, attention, and mental computation beyond your biological brain while functioning as part of it.

FAIR

Meta’s Fundamental AI Research lab. The open-research arm of Meta AI.

fMRI

Functional magnetic resonance imaging. Room-sized scanner with millimeter spatial resolution; the highest-quality non-invasive signal we have, at the lowest portability.

fNIRS

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Measures blood oxygenation through the skull using infrared. Cheap, wearable, slow.

Glial signaling

Communication between glial cells, the non-neuronal majority of brain cells. Increasingly suspected to modulate cognition, not just support neurons.

Hemodynamic

Relating to blood flow. Sensors such as fNIRS read the blood-oxygenation shadow of neural activity through the skull.

Interpretability

The effort to understand what happens inside a neural network: which internal features and circuits produce its behavior.

Limbic system

A set of deep brain structures that drive emotion, motivation, and reward. It is the circuitry that advertising has always tried to reach from the outside.

MEG

Magnetoencephalography. It reads the tiny magnetic fields cast by neural activity. Millisecond timing, but classically needs a room-sized cryogenic scanner; OPMs are a new wearable path.

Microelectrode arrays

Tiny silicon chips with dozens to hundreds of hair-thin needles, surgically inserted into brain tissue to record the firing of individual neurons.

Microtubules

Tube-shaped protein structures inside neurons. Some theories (Penrose-Hameroff) propose they support quantum computation; mainstream neuroscience is still skeptical.

Motor cortex

The strip of cortex that plans and executes voluntary movement. Easiest brain region to decode from, because intentions there map cleanly to body actions.

NWB

Neurodata Without Borders. A standardized data format and ecosystem for neurophysiology recordings. The closest thing to a common schema across labs.

OPM

Optically-pumped magnetometer. A chip-scale magnetic-field sensor that works at room temperature; the path to wearable MEG.

Phase Lock Window

The brief interval between recognizing that AI will surpass us and the moment it does; the span in which humanity still has the agency to shape the terms of the relationship. Roughly now to the mid-2030s.

Quantum effects

Hypothesis that quantum-mechanical phenomena (coherence, entanglement) play a functional role in brain computation. Live but speculative, no consensus evidence.

Ransomware

Malicious software that encrypts a victim’s data or device and demands payment to restore access.

RLHF

Reinforcement learning from human feedback. The training step where humans rank a model’s outputs to steer it toward preferred behavior.

sEMG

Surface electromyography. Reads electrical activity of muscles through skin electrodes. Well-suited to subtle motor intent and silent speech.

Signal-to-noise

How strong the wanted signal is against background noise; the core obstacle to reading the brain through skull and skin.

Whole Brain Emulation

A hypothetical process of scanning, mapping, and simulating a biological brain on a computer so that the digital model functions identically to the original mind.

wpm

Words per minute. A standard measure of communication speed.