My last post (I know it’s been a long time) was about breaking research on brain image reproduction. After reading recent publications on the subject I am filled with a giddy excitement, and paranoid fear at the same time. While my scientific inner child, who wants nothing but to build world peace by the means of very large shiny tools, dances with joy at the idea of being able to tap into all of the thoughts that his hands and mouth are too clumsy to articulate. My paranoid sci-fi apocalyptic reading inner adult cringes at the thought of someone being able to monitor our most inner thoughts, are safest of safe places could be monitored! I suddenly feel naked in my cubicle knowing that my boss could not only monitor the key strokes of this blog, but also read my thoughts!
whoa whoa, slow down. data overload.
What I am talking about is fMRI. the possibility of being able to construct data collected from the brain in a way that you can actually see what’s going on in there. Neuroscientists at UCLA and Rutgers University have been working on exactly that. Turning a cat scan machine into a mental x-ray. How successful they currently are or are not may determine how sound this technology may prove to be in our lifetime. But any success is an indication that it will be one day possible.
Many of you have read the “tweet with your mind” story. I thought it would be cool tell I saw the head dress you would have to wear. The interesting part to me was that the tech was so accessible that they put it together in a matter of weeks.
How long will it be till I don’t have to type this blog? When I make a mental note, it is actually a pdf note or list that I can go back through later. When the minds of babies can be recorded so we can actually know “what are they thinking?”. When we can download the memories of our loved ones, or not so loved ones and keep them for history. The possibilities are endless. If you think twitter is big, wait until we have linked data w/o a computer interface. Information could be closer than your fingertips.
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