In this excellent short documentary by filmmaker Francesco Paciocco, we meet a number of “brain hackers” focused on elevating consciousness to the next level.
Master/Mind starts by interviewing the founders of a company called OpenBCI that builds open-source EEGs for use by scientists, students, hackers, and basically anyone who wants a crack at accessing their own brain’s electrical activity. “I think brain-computer interfaces are going to be instrumental to human evolution,” says Conor Russomanno, OpenBCI’s co-founder.
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Russell Hanson and Jason Fuller, founders of Brain Backups, are trying to find a way to image the brain by mapping synapses. They’re hoping to impact patients with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and ALS.
The short film also touches on the ethics of brain hacking, and how it could cause a lot of philosophical debate down the road. As Lydia Fazzio of Biohackers NYC notes, “there’s a tension between, do we want to create humanoid elements, do we want to enhance the human being? Or do we just want the technology to enhance our standard of living?”
The film goes on to question the implications of creating a superintelligence, and presents the debate between those who see brainhacking as hubris and those who see it as the natural progression of humanity.
Says Russomanno, “I think that whatever we turn into, whatever we become, we need to make sure that we’re still human.”
