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In this latest instalment of our speculative column Future Chronicles, an imagined history of future inventions, Rowan Hooper explores the pros (and cons) of networking our brains with those of other animals
By Rowan Hooper
“A human mind-melded to a rat could move with the rodent, and smell and feel what it sensed…”
Shutterstock/Linda Bestwick
In T. H. White’s series of novels The Once and Future King, the wizard Merlyn turns the young Arthur, future king of England, into a variety of animals. As a small fish, Arthur swims in a moat and is terrorised by a stronger pike; as a hawk, Arthur learns to respect the dominant old falcon. In giving him these experiences, Merlyn aims to educate Arthur and make him a good king.
By the 2040s, it had become possible, to a…
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