According to this article, the technology shown in the Matrix movie where the characters downloaded new skills into their brains through a neural link has been invented using current technology. This is using an Magnetic Resonance Machine to capture the brain activity associated with performing a certain task and then transferring the data to someone else, who then experienced a boost in skill at performing the task in question. The ramifications for this technology are awesome, you could educate people by simply beaming the brainwave data into the brain and teach people mathematics, languages and other skills by transferring the data instead of the person spending ages and ages in school every day for 12 years. There was a book I read 20 years ago now, that was the story of an alien who came to Earth and lived with the humans for a while, he described technology his people had that was similar to this, where they could beam information into the heads of children and they only had to go to school for 5 minutes each day. That could become a reality today. I am not sure how fast the information can be beamed into the brain, but certainly this is a revolutionary technological advance and will change education forever if it comes to fruition. Neo in the Matrix was able to learn martial arts using similar technology to this, but he still had to have actual physical training to perfect his skills. But education in this fashion would still be very effective and faster than 12 years of school and then many years at University.
The transhumanism argument has gone on for a very long time, current technology can shrink a microprocessor to a very small scale indeed, and if you could implant a small microprocessor into a student who could then receive lessons beamed directly into their brains, we would learn a whole Encyclopedia worth of information in much less time. Could someone learn C++ or Python using this development and become a productive programmer by hooking into the data transmitted over the airwaves? There was an episode of the Outer Limits that dealt with this possibility, where anyone Could use their implant and access any information in a second by using a cellular network called The Stream. A good question to ask about this new development is whether the information supplied by this network would be free or not. There could be public domain information from Wiki sites but I guess that a lot of information from newspapers would be pay-walled. The Murdoch press are making their newspapers pay per read online, but their are many other sites like blogs and many news websites that are free. Once this is commonly available, we will be open to many new possibilities in terms of human achievement and maybe we can fix the ailing public school system in America now. Here is to hoping. This sounds rather like a plot for a Ghost in the shell movie and ties right in with the obsession with technology now, where everyone has an Iphone and can Google something to find out the answer to any question. I just hope people would actually learn something from this and not just end up relying on the link to solve any question or to learn everything under the Sun.