In today’s Money Morning…the digital revolution…the next digital device…our worst decisions will be only a thought away…and more…
We’re on the verge of the next big thing in the tech revolution. We’ve had PCs, laptops, and mobile phones.
But now there’s a new platform emerging, and it’s taking us right into a sci-fi future, and raises the question of what it even means to be human.
I’m going to tell you what I’m doing about this opportunity right now. But first, I’m going to tell you about the key players that are vying for the front of the pack.
And how this all started…
The digital revolution
The digital revolution has been the dominant theme of the last 30 years. Many of the themes and forces that we can identify are really just sub-themes of the digital revolution.
The 1960s laid the foundation for this digital boom. Operating systems, graphical user interfaces, and the mouse provided a greater ease of use and level of sophistication. We’re still using the exact same methods to interact with our PCs as we were using before PCs were even a thing.
Of course, we’ve gone beyond those humble beginnings to the Internet, laptops, mobile phones, social media, digital currencies, and Non-Fungible Token (NFTs). That’s just on the consumer front.
We’re working, socialising, and playing with this technology more and more.
So where to next?
The next big 20-year theme could be tech integration with our physical bodies. Now, I’m not talking about wearables — things like virtual reality goggles and smart watches.
I’m talking about implantables.
One of Elon Musk’s ventures — Neuralink — has gained a lot of publicity with brain-implanted chips that have already been tested in monkeys. One of Musk’s goals is to ‘restore full-body functionality to someone who has a spinal cord injury’.
But he’s not the only one.
UK-based chip designer, Arm, entered an agreement with the University of Washington in 2017 to develop brain-implantable chips. Again, a core focus is on giving full body functionality back to people with paralysis.
The idea of brain surgery to get one of these chips working is a bit daunting, though.
Well, just last year, Synchron received FDA approval to trial their flagship product — Stentrode. Their solution is to deliver the device to the brain via blood vessels, specifically through the jugular.
No drilling required.
Let’s face it, any time you’ve the choice of NOT having open brain surgery, you’d probably take that option.
Stentrode will sit in the desired part of the brain inside the blood vessel. It looks something like this:
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| Source: https://synchron.com/technology |
This is just an early study, and the focus will definitely be on safety. However, they’ll be aiming to give patients the ability to remotely control digital devices with their thoughts.
The next digital device
The human body is the next digital device. When we all have chips in our brains, mobile phones will become obsolete.
And just think about how massive the mobile phone industry has been.
I’ve talked a bit about the metaverse in recent months. Let’s face it, everyone has.
One of the things with the metaverse is that there’s no agreed consensus on what it is. They’re vague notions of being able to project into a digital landscape in full awareness with virtual reality.
Well, maybe we’ll never be inside the metaverse. Maybe the metaverse will be inside us. A brain-implanted chip or series of chips that allow us to just focus on the screen of our mind and enter that ever-daunting Ikea showroom at any moment.
Or whatever other destination that currently requires at least a car drive worth of serious intent to make it a reality.
Our worst decisions will be only a thought away.
But then again, so will our best decisions.
And we’ll never have to look for that damned TV remote again. In fact, we’ll probably just get rid of TVs and simply close our eyes every time we want to watch a movie.
Brain-machine interface (BMI) chips may soon be giving paralysed people a better quality of life. Soon after that, we may be using them to play computer games in our minds, increase our intelligence, or monitor our blood for health indicators.
The point is the opportunities are huge.
And this is on our doorstep now. So it’s time to be thinking about how to get exposure to this emerging field.
Well, this is just one of three forces that my colleague Ryan Dinse and I see colliding to form what we’re calling ‘The 200-Year Human’.
It’s the latest theme in our Exponential Stock Investor portfolio, and our first buy recommendation came out this month.
We’re scouring every part of the invest-o-sphere, looking for the linkages and opportunities for this huge emerging theme. If you’d like to know more about this and other exponential themes we see emerging, click here.
Until next week,
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Izaac Ronay,
Editor, Money Morning
Izaac is also an editor at Exponential Stock Investor, a stock tipping newsletter that hunts for promising small-cap stocks. For information on how to subscribe and see what Izaac’s telling subscribers right now, please click here.
