Brain waves
Elon Musk’s cyborg future
Good morning, synapse synthesizers. This is your Stock Market Rundown for February 9th, 2024. Thank you for joining me today. Let’s get into it:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: NAVIGATING THE NEURAL NETWORK
If you could have a chip implanted in your brain, what would you want to download first? The ability to speak Chinese? Figure-skate like an Olympic medallist? Finally know which tie matches with which shoes?
If Elon Musk is to be believed, it might all be just a few years away. When Musk founded his implantable brain chip company Neuralink in 2016, he was inspired by science fiction, but now it’s on the way to becoming fact.
In a recent Neuralink trial, a human had a chip implanted in their brain for the first time ever. The goal is to create a brain-computer interface that allows people to control a computer using their thoughts alone.
Imagine: summing columns on an Excel spreadsheet through the sheer power of your mind. Or, quickly closing your not-safe-for-work browser tabs when your boss walks into your office, just by blinking your eyes.
Neuralink’s chip has electrodes that can read signals from neurons. With more development, it could allow information to be beamed from a computer back into the brain. Musk is so confident in the product, he plans to someday have one implanted in his own cranium. Guess he’s not worried about setting off airport metal detectors.
Elon Musk tweeted that the initial results of the first human trial are “promising”, but it’ll be a while before results are out. In the meantime, Neuralink is recruiting more trial participants, but it’s only open to people with disabilities that could be helped by the technology.
The rest of us will just have to wait until Neuralink is commercialized before we can play Mario Kart using our minds instead of the Nintendo controller.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
There’s now an exchange-traded fund that gives you exposure to the “Magnificent Seven”—the seven biggest tech companies, whose gains have far outpaced the overall market. Pro tip: somebody trying to sell you a product based on a market theme is a pretty sure sign that the theme has peaked.
Bayer will pay billions in damages due to lawsuits over whether its Roundup herbicide is carcinogenic. Yes, I know weedkiller gives squirrels testicular cancer, but I can’t give my neighbor Gary the satisfaction of his lawn looking better than mine.
An activist investor is trying to move the furniture around in the Barbie Dreamhouse. In a scathing letter to Mattel (the toymaker behind Barbie), Barrington Capital Group demanded changes including selling off Fisher-Price. This could lead to screaming tantrums from both toddlers and company execs alike.
Chinese automaker Geely just launched 11 low-earth-orbit satellites that will provide navigation for autonomous vehicles. Add these to the five thousand satellites already orbiting the earth, and the stratosphere is cluttered with as much junk as the grandstands of Fenway after a Red Sox game.
And we're done for the week, respected peers; let's gather again bright and early Monday morning for more nonsense. Yours in capitalism, The Axe