Mind hacking
19 August 2008 by Stardust
It’s not enough for the government to want to tap our phone lines to hear our conversations. Now they are working on a way to try to read our minds (disguised as good intentions to help soldiers, stroke victims, etc.) :
Guess what? Military funds mind-reading science
LOS ANGELES - Here’s a mind-bending idea: The U.S. military is paying scientists to study ways to read people’s thoughts. The hope is that the research could someday lead to a gadget capable of translating the thoughts of soldiers who suffered brain injuries in combat or even stroke patients in hospitals.
But the research also raises concerns that such mind-reading technology could be used to interrogate the enemy.
Or whoever they deem as a “potential threat” to use this on, I am sure.
Armed with a $4 million grant from the Army, scientists are studying brain signals to try to decipher what a person is thinking and to whom the person wants to direct the message.
A waste of our tax dollars? Or valuable research for the future?
The scientists use brain wave-reading technology known as electroencephalography, or EEG, which measures the brain’s electrical activity through electrodes placed on the scalp.
It works like this: Volunteers wear an electrode cap and are asked to think of a word chosen by the researchers, who then analyze the brain activity.
In the future, scientists hope to develop thought-recognition software that would allow a computer to speak or type out a person’s thought.
“To have a person think in a free manner and then figure out what that is, we’re years away from that,” said lead researcher Michael D’Zmura, who heads UC Irvine’s cognitive sciences department.
I think it’s gonna be a long, long time and is a big waste of time and money.
19 August 2008, on 4:10 pm
I’d say this sort of thing is still well within the ‘pure research’ range. Probably more productive to spend that effort on the chips you install in people’s heads like they’ve been having early successes with, rather than some allegedly convenient cap.
But, if we’re talking about the military, they should get back to work on jetpacks and mecha.
19 August 2008, on 7:57 pm
I would kill to have my own transformable robot! Will I get to wear cool spandex and call myself a Power Ranger?
19 August 2008, on 9:54 pm
This sounds like a giant waste of $4-bigguns. Given what I know of the mapping of the brain, everyone’s brain varies just a little from everyone else’s (we’re fucking snowflakes, as Lewis Black would say.)
Forming cogent sentences from such an inconsistent source seems questionable–unless the program doing the translation was programed effectively to take context into consideration and translate generalizations assigned to neural impulses into “thoughts”–seems too many variables are involved (and it will cost a HELL of a lot more than the initial start-up fee listed above to come to fruition.)
And yes, any militarily based gov’t program generally has intended applications beyond and much less altruistic than those stated to the public. Scary if it could be effectively developed.
19 August 2008, on 10:08 pm
I’ll bet you that this technology would never ever be able to be used to interrogate people or read someones mind unwillingly. Firstly because you don’t think one thought at a time so all they’d get out would be a jumbled mess and if they got over that you could always just distract yourself by singing Baby Got Back over and over in your head.
The technology seems pretty redundant in the disability feild too as there is already technology that allows a person to control a computer with their mind (designed for hardcore gamers). It’s not perfect and it takes a lot of calibration but seems to me like it’d be better to develope that than start from scratch.
19 August 2008, on 11:21 pm
On a NON-military note…
Shades of the old movie “Brainstorm”, with Christopher Walken? Of course, in that film, one could reproduce the identical experience as the original recorded one…over and over.
And, of course, the most sought after experience would be…what! (you guessed it?)…
a fantastic orgasm?
Here’s a couple of YouTubes to “reproduce” a remembrance of that rather interesting 1983 film:
“Brainstorm Movie Trailer” [length 2:32]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VardFGDZPu4&feature=related
“Brainstorm - The Freaky Part” [length 4:47]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGVyMOBRXBY&feature=related
It’ll probably NEVER happen…at least in my lifetime…but can you imagine a “Brainstorm” rental service…something like…’BrainFlix” (Porno) service?
Talk about a potentially mind-blowing addiction!
20 August 2008, on 3:20 am
“I think it’s gonna be a long, long time…”
…Till touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a Rocket Man
Rocket Man burning out his fuse up here alone…
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
20 August 2008, on 4:06 am
I would love to see this technology researched and developed. There are a million different useful and beneficial applications. My question is, why do we always have to involve the fucking military from the get-go? Are we really that scared and pathetic?
If this idea ever reaches its full fruition, we could store our dreams for later entertainment or analysis, we could make entertainment much more life-like, we could help impaired people communicate, we could share life experiences on a more fundamental level, we could achieve cross-cultural and even cross-species communication, for fuck’s sake…but the first research and application will most likely be for interrogation or spying, and if these applications don’t pan out, there goes all the funding until the private sector can squeeze a buck out of it, probably on some shitty video game. I know it has to start somewhere, but fuck!
As a species we are making great strides into both inner and outer space, but we’ve got a lot of growing up to do before we will be able to really take advantage of it all.
20 August 2008, on 7:50 am
Waste. All you have to do is hold two rods over the person’s head and ask them to think a thought, and when the rods cross…
21 August 2008, on 2:44 pm
Wasn’t something like this on Mythbusters awhile back—basically measuring brain responses as a new way to do polygraph testing? IIRC, it was successful in spotting the deceptions of test subjects Tori, Grant, and Kari.
(as was the traditional polygraph test). I think Grant managed to fool one of the tests once, and I think it was the brain scan method, but it might’ve been the traditional polygraph testing method. Not quite the same thing as what the military is proposing, but not wholly unrelated either. The military are also fans of woo like “remote viewing”, etc.
Slightly O.T., I was always underwhelmed by the abilities of ST:TNG main character Counselor Troy and her ability to point out the obvious, er, “read emotions”. I always wanted Picard to look at her and say “and we PAY you for this?”