|
4
Nerd-Its
|
|
Hold That Thought
The military is funding research for mind-reading technology in development by assortments of scientists. It's a notion that screams of the cold war experimental dabblings into paranormal ability between America and the Soviet Union. This time the technology is pitched at helping soldiers with brain injuries or damaged communicative abilities. Of course, there are those who say the intent of the technology is for interrogative capabilities against captured prisoners.
Star This to Save in Your Profile 
Add a Comment (1)
Email This
Message Author
Statistics
Thread parent sort order:
Thread verbosity:
RSS
What am I thinking? by NomadSoul :: NR6 :: Show
Well, practically speaking I think this is a very long way off. It might be possible to tell what kind of thought a person is having by reading activation patterns, but to read the specific content of a thought, the way you might listen to an audio recording, will remain science fiction for some time. The longer the better...
The sort of sensitive equipment needed to do this would be too cumbersome and sensitive to be practical for everyday usage. It'd be like wearing a whole MRI machine on your head--and even then you'd have to isolate it from any possible source of interference, no matter how tiny. This means the most likely use of this technology is in some sort of special room. So, it's not practical to help someone with a brain injury unless you want to dedicate all that equipment exclusively to him or her, or use it temporarily for some sort of training or recovery. But it would make a terrible prosthesis if it had to be permanent. That said, a mind-reading room would be perfect for interrogation... and everyone knows that sooner or later, if they have this capability, they'll find a way to use it. If someone can be ordered to waterboard someone, they can sure as hell be ordered to use a theoretically harmless technique to pull the information from enemy minds.
So, taking my usual semi-Luddite stance, I think this is a terrible idea. Even if they mean well, a perfected form of this technology could be horribly abused, and would bring in an age of unimaginable tyranny unless we manage to do away with hierarchical social structures before it is discovered. Nobody really needs this kind of power, and the absolute last group of people who should have access to it is the military. I'm sure there are plenty of other potential technologies that could help with a brain injury that don't involve such sinister possibilities.