Elon Musk is Silicon Valley’s favourite techno-visionary. New ideas he champions — even when they sound like they come from science fiction — are guaranteed prominent headlines. Other tech investors and entrepreneurs feel compelled to follow.
The hyperloop — a proposed new form of high-speed transport — was one such Musk brainwave. After the Tesla and SpaceX founder actively promoted the technology, it set off a global race to build the system.
But, even for Mr Musk, injecting nanoscale electronics into the brain sounds far-fetched. He has been dreaming of “neural lace”, an artificially created intracranial mesh that would provide a neural link to external computers.