The Mind-Machine Interface #5

In this episode of what is slowly coming to be known as the Metropolitan Biodiversity Primer, I would like to restrain myself from just simply pulling off another brilliant yet utterly abstact piece of writing. This time I would like to take a deep dive in what the future, not the present, might bring for us, and share some of my thoughts on the subject.

Ironically, as mentioned in the BBC's article here ('Thoughts read' via brain scans), the very idea of making an intellectual effort to 'share' one's thoughts may become obsolete one day.

First of all, I have to admit - I had to read the article twice before fully realising what its implications were. Then I decided to take a sandwich and a beer, hoping that the bad dream would be gone by the time I finished.

But - of course - it didn't.

I decided to be a little more proactive and reloaded my browser a couple of times but it didn't help either. The bloody news was still there, heralding that my worst nightmare might come true in the forseeable future:

All these stupid pricks' thoughts going public. Wireless. Blogwise. Searchwise. Newsfeedwise. Google-AdSensewise (creepy...).

No. I'm not saying that people are stupid in general, but I do imply that some people are definitely less witty than others, and therefore, their thoughts should remain truly theirs for eternity. Full stop.

Let's perform a short intellectual excercise:

First, assume that The Mind-Machine Interface (or whatever you call the device; the marketing approach would sugest something like BrainGoogle or - for the sake of simplicity - Broogle) is a common device implanted in our glasses, hats, teeth or wherever else one might feel it's convinient to have it (yep, I know what you're thinking...). That in turn would mean: about 90% of the civilized population of the planet would use it on a daily basis.

Now imagine that in a couple of years since its introduction, it - as the common sense dictates - assumes the role of what used to be your iPod, mobile phone, PDA and - eventually - your PC.

And lets assume that the cities (or perhaps even the whole globe, who knows?) are covered with broadband wi-fi networks.

And, last but not least, the most likely assumption: everyone will think that he's the smart-ass of the neighbourhood. Why not tell that to everyone? You know - just in case they haven't heard before (blogwise, serachwise, emailwise etc.).

Dr John-Dylan Haynes of the University College London who seems to be the head of this particular research project, reportedly said: "We are still a long way off from developing a universal mind-reading machine". But being a long way off doesn't mean "we are not on the way at all".

Dear Dr John-Dylan Haynes! I strongly urge you not to proceed with your project. For the sake of the human civilization, your invention if improved and applied, would prove to be a disaster ten times as severe as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagaskaki, a hundred times more vicious than the American cable TV, and at least a thousand times more lethal than an Iraqi 'foreign combatant' with a purpose.

It would mark the end of the Information Era, and the rise of what the historians (that is, if any of them survives) would later on refer to as The Time When Everything Collapsed, Cities Crumbled, People Almost Died Out And All Of That Because Every Single One Of Them Thought That He Was Smarter Than The Rest Or In Other Words: The Era Of Major Shit (or Pandelirium for short).

I reiterate: please, don't!

For those of you who are still not convinced: An Example of The Things To Come [below]