https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-structure-that-filters-consciousness-identified/
Research on Consciousness as explained in this link is at initial stages of similarity as when Edison was experimenting with over 100 00 variants to finally discover the first incandescent bulb. And mankind has moved much forward since towards Green Energy today
This is not to underrate the newer thrusts engaged in brain experiments in our 21st Century. ( Fragile Brain experiments originally began in 1900 actually) These are a precursor, I believe, to a similar fundamental change in approach and attitude of the higher brains in humans with the Cosmic Phenomenon that we are ‘consciously’ very small “member-specks” of…
…even as we do our daily chores on jobs @ homes and offices or move around in a jobless growth oriented socio- economic environment. Technology, we do realise has triggered many unimaginable possibilities.
Fundamental among these are the neurological likelihoods that have now emerged and continue to provide awesome fields of study into the 2050s. These studies and inferences I believe are the prelims much as Edison’s experiments were in our quest for scientific discoveries.
I sense
The 2040- 2050 decade will be a watershed in Man’s quest with Divinity. By divinity I mean that accelerating force MEST- matter, energy, space and time.
I envisage the much reduced Human Populace (with the inverted demographic pyramid gingerly taking shape) may finally create environments when Silence will be accepted as a Dynamic Field of energy.
Much then less attention will be focused in the 2050s upon the current disruptions caused by the infringement made by AI as it eclipses HI in 2025. This is a certainty postulated by most Futurologist including Ray Kurzweil and the 2024 Nobel Winners in Physics- for foundational discoveries & inventions that enable machine learning with Artificial Neural Networks ( Profs. John Hopfield and Geoff Hinton).
(Quite naturally the aforesaid link on “brain structures and filters” is augmented by activated AI enabled R&D technology.)
So our current forms of human ( thinking) species will go extinct. The remaining species of Humans in the 2050s onward), will find it better than now to be intelligently more at ease with the divine nature of ‘being’ on planet earth. This will be in sharp contrast to current trends perceived in human instincts that influence behaviors. These also ill-behove the very thick layers of confusion in common sense that technology and consumer products have created!
So yes- we are now talking of Persons of Tomorrow of the 2050s. Totally different type human beings!
Their Focus will Not be limited to the hard problem of Consciousness but cracking the hard problem of Matter. AI will be merging technology and human intelligence at that point with more acceleration than at present.
Patterns of matter and energy in the Universe will become saturated with intelligent processes and knowledge, unimaginable to our present day brain cognition. (Kurzweil). The hard problem of Matter will be finally resolved perhaps.
Because the planets and cosmic forces, which we consider separate from our ‘being’ today, have actually always been responding to variety of changes/shifts ( tectonic ones e.g. on earth causing disruptions)…and increasing or reducing speed of their rotation in the various systems they are part of. Our Solar System is also ageing….but these are issues we are so, so unconcerned about in 2025. This won’t be so in the 2050s, I envisage.
“We are all asleep,” had observed Wittgenstein. “Our life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, once in a while- just to know we are dreaming”. By 2080s life will have woken up differently.
Maybe, just maybe, in the late 21st century, with AI eclipsing HI in every conceivably manner, our Ignorance will finally be removed by Neural Wakefulness! There will no longer be the huge gap in our chronological and psychological ages as is so apparent in our individual, family, community, national and geo- political erratic behaviors today! Matters will be more aligned and integrated.
For me it doesn’t really matter to miss out on the quarter/ semi-final stages of such imagined transition as I experience the todays and tomorrows while I still live. Because I am slowly waking up in a very benign manner. Trustfully I will continue taking it easy as well.
Because I already feel the first few pangs of being in a “non-local” world in these formative Matrix ambiance. (Refer : a Dr. Deepak Chopra podcast on “Mind, Memory and the Multiverse” UTube April 2025 that I chanced upon) . I get a non-linear experience of Time sometimes. Time passes joyfully in those moments much as was in Tennyson’s “Lotus Eaters” poem.
Whatever, with Joyfulness we have to move forward in this Nether World. Sadly our lower brains, and not the higher ones, are more functional. But this won’t be for long. Because Evolution has always worked through indirection. It has created a capability; then used that capability to evolve the next stage. This is why I call Nature the only God in this Multiverse.
And the Persons of Tomorrow will have their higher brains much more functional. Why? Because Nature wills it so- that is evolving Consciousness carried within MEST. We must find it to realise eternity.
Prof. Partho S. Sengupta from fringes of Calcutta!
Behavioral Sciences Area/Master – NLP Trainer/Practitioner;
Former Member – Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC);
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
