I used to get quite excited about the concept of Joe 90 - the little lad with the glasses, who after spending a couple of minutes in a swirly gyroscope type machine, with some futuristic music playing, got a temporary transplant of some highly intelligent chap’s brain - more often than not a doddery old nuclear scientist. This enabled our little hero to scoot off and foil a dastardly threat to mankind.That was exciting, but the modern day version of Joe 90 is plain frightening! We were informed via an article in The Times on Saturday that ‘Brainjacking’ technology, or Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature Profiling to give it its full title, is now sufficiently developed to be of use in a wide variety of fields.
Plonk on the electrode-filled cap, plug in and watch your innermost secrets appear on the computer screen. Well, that might be over-simplifying it a little but those Times hacks do tend to do their homework, and they report that rapid recent advances in medical brain imaging mean much is now possible that was once pure fantasy.
Apparently the military, politicians and marketing people (surely not!) are all clamouring to get their hands on the technology which will help them tell if someone has been in a terrorist camp, which manifesto items are likely to win approval or which soap powder jingle prompts a ‘buy’ impulse.
Could the last frontier of exploration - the space between our ears - really be this close to being ‘conquered’? It is indeed a frightening thought, especially when it is being predicted that the physical size of the technology required to steal our thoughts is shrinking all the time and that a device the size of an alice band could soon be adequate! My alice band days are officially over!
Jez
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