At first, these were just philosophical musings. However, Elbakyan was compelled by how neural interfaces could enable people to share information, even across language barriers, with unprecedented speed. “Later, I expanded the idea to include not only hard interfaces that would connect people directly neuron-by-neuron, but also soft interfaces, such as speech, that we use every day to communicate.” She cared less about the form than the function: she wanted a global brain. To her, paywalls began to seem like the plaques in an Alzheimer’s-riddled mind, clogging up the flow of information.