Extraordinary piece of scientific news this morning (and as I am not a scientist what I say should be treated with caution) - apparently, a mechanism has been developed that can convert electrical signals in the brain into words. It has been used on patients undergoing brain surgery - and the words that were "read" were words that had been spoken by people involved in the research - which were obviously being processed by the unconscious person's brain.... but clearly it's a start... and we can just guess where it will lead.
It's a pity I can't be arsed to do the research for science fiction - but clearly a refined version of this mechanism/method could in some decades time, enable anyone's brain to be systematically "read".
Never mind the internet, this would be the end of privacy, subversion, transgresive thoughts... there would be nowhere to hide. Never mind the collective unconscious - now we would be living in a world of collective consciousness - will we become as meaningful as bees or ants? Nightmarish scenarios occur. Would we cease in any meaningful sense to be individual? Of course it is not that this is likely to become widespread - but you can imagine people "farming" other people's thoughts or creativity - and the sophistication of this method for extracting information certainly beats waterboarding... forget about lie detectors...
Dystopian ideas seethe through my brain, but I must get on with some editing.
It's a pity I can't be arsed to do the research for science fiction - but clearly a refined version of this mechanism/method could in some decades time, enable anyone's brain to be systematically "read".
Never mind the internet, this would be the end of privacy, subversion, transgresive thoughts... there would be nowhere to hide. Never mind the collective unconscious - now we would be living in a world of collective consciousness - will we become as meaningful as bees or ants? Nightmarish scenarios occur. Would we cease in any meaningful sense to be individual? Of course it is not that this is likely to become widespread - but you can imagine people "farming" other people's thoughts or creativity - and the sophistication of this method for extracting information certainly beats waterboarding... forget about lie detectors...
Dystopian ideas seethe through my brain, but I must get on with some editing.
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