Image via WikipediaThere have been some recent news articles recently about computers that can read minds.They believe the breakthrough could give a voice to paralysed patients who have lost the power of speech.
'We were beside ourselves with excitement when it started working,' said Bradley Greger, a bioengineer who led the research at Utah University.
'It was just one of those moments when everything came together. I would call it brain reading.
'We hope that in two or three years it will be available for use by paralysed patients.'
Currently those with 'locked-in' syndrome - following a stroke, disease or injury - communicate by blinking an eye or twitching a finger to choose letters or words from a list.
The new technology is being celebrated as a way to help stroke patients and others who have lost the power of speech. It's funny that no other applications are mentioned in this article. It's also questionable that years of dedicated and expensive research were conducted with only the end goal of helping a tiny, yet pitiable portion of the population.
This article, from the same paper, is a little more balanced, and points out some of the potential misuse of the technology.
All this aside, however, there is a sinister side to any form of mind-reading. Already, our legal system seems to be drifting uncomfortably close to the notion of the 'thought crime'.
People have been prosecuted, for example, not for blowing-up planes or abusing children, but for writing about, drawing pictures of or emailing friends about such crimes. That is not, many would argue, the same thing at all.
This is bad enough, but imagine what would happen if the police were to have mind-screening at their disposal.
If images of abuse or torture, or brain patterns suggestive of fanatical religiosity, or perverted sexuality could be revealed by a future mind-reading machine (and it may turn out that the minds of fanatical madmen are quite easy to spot), it would be incredibly tempting to simply lock the suspect away and throw away the key.
This is a superficially attractive, but deeply-flawed argument, one which was explored rather well in the 2002 movie Minority Report.
Perfectly law-abiding people think all sorts of things, not all of them wholesome and certainly not all of them legal.
But thoughts are not deeds, and once certain thoughts become illegal, then we have entered a hellish world.
Good points against the use of such devices are made here, however I can think of a few benefits.
Why not test these machines on people who have real influence and power in our society?
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