Slashdot Mirror
Going Cyberpunk
goingincirclez writes "Cnet has an article about the development of a "Neuro-chip". This can be implanted in the brain and is currently being researched for medical uses. The article makes a brief mention the composition of pictures on a computer based on signlas receieved from the brain. Couple this development with the information in this Wired article from last October, and I can't help but wonder how far we are from literally being able to record dreams and thoughts?" On a similar note there are stories about a temperature-sensing implantable microchip and a scientist who claims he can tell whether you've committed a crime.
If (and I'm stressing that if) this becomes "widely accepted", couldn't one simply refuse to allow oneself to be tested, as it would really just be another form of self incrimination, which we are protected from by the 5th Amendment? After all, each of these little "brain spikes" would be like the defendant muttering "I did it" each time he was shown a card with evidence on it.
With laws like the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act and the DMCA, hasn't pretty much everyone broken the law now? It hardly takes a scientists to tell whether someone's a criminal these days. Hell, it's been true for decades that the tax code is so fiendishly complex that no one can understand it, let alone comply with it fully. And if all else fails, there's always the speed limit laws...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
And as we all know, everything you can think of will be done! What can YOU think of?
*shudder*
If there is one lesson we can learn from history, it is that we dont learn from history ~ dont know whose quote
I've no problem with this so long as we screen all our elected representatives, judges, lawyers and police officers before starting on anyone else...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
And to answer the unspoken question: Can FPGA's be used in your brain? I say this: Get Real. Current FPGA technology has no possible application. Maybe in 5 or 10 years, when we have conquered the leakage problem, and have developed fuel cells that run on glucose. But I don't see it, since an ASIC dedicated to brain interface functions will be a far superior solution. FPGA's may evolve into a future computing fabric, so they may have useful applications in external hardware, but it will be a very distant descendent of FPGA's that are finally used for in-body implants.
Would you really want a cranial jack? Or would you want to go wifi? Part of me would rather not have an unsightly USB port on the back of my skull, but then, being plugged in all the time woulf make you more vulnerable to hacking. When someone hacks your PC, it's not a huge deal...at worst, you have to reformat your hard drive. But if they hacked your brain...
I see this mainly as a way to have true input/output from a cybernetic prosthesis, allowing the fake leg to do real things. Maybe hardcore MMOG players (read: otaku) would get it as well so they could truly live in those environments and escape reality. Other than than....do people really want the privacy of their own thoughts violated? A mindreading device would crash and burn because everyone has their own secrets they don't want anyone else to know. Though black market industry might take over...consider the House of Blue Lights from Gibson's Burning Chrome. Or chips in two people's brains (one monitoring input and one controlling output) so that one of the people is basically experiencing and controlling the other body. I could see a lot of market for THAT for government, celebrities, and big business...want to go somewhere but you don't want to have to be followed by bodygards? Use a puppet body so no matter what happens to the body, you're still safe at home.
Regardless, this is more likely to become a black market technology. You can use it in too many unethical ways that would never be approved by law but still have both the $$ and desire to be done.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
Brain fingerprinting works by measuring and analyzing split-second spikes in electrical activity in the brain when it responds to something it recognizes. ...if a suspected murderer was shown a detail of the crime scene that only he would know, his brain would involuntarily register that knowledge. ... A person who had never seen that crime scene would show no reaction.
So the detail is blood in a clawfoot tub. Maybe you have a clawfoot tub? Maybe you watched a dozen different movies with blood/tub scenes. Maybe you have the same exact Teledyne Waterpic that the murder victim has hanging in his shower. You could recognize anything for any number of reasons. Not only that, but your memory changes over time. After 23 years that guy could have been imagining innocence scenarios for so long it looked to the scanner like he was innocent.
Sorry, I don't buy it at all.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Both of the articles discuss observing only electrical activity. While useful, it is analogous to an EKG, just a graph of currents that can tell us the heart rate yet gives us little functional info beyond that. It can't tell you what the blood pressure is, or what the quality or quantity of the blood components is. The devices described are only a little more invasive than a device already in use to diagnose certain brain abnormalities: the electroencephalograph (EEG). It may diagnose epilepsy and sometimes causes of dementia, can suggest the occasional tumor and can tell us a person is brain dead. That's about it. It certainly doesn't tell the world what you're thinking, your sexual preference, or your illicit file-sharing habits.
The article on brain fingerprinting makes clear (at least to me) that the machine is of the same concept as a lie-detector test, though perhaps more advanced and reliable. IMHO, the test is not self-incriminating any more than that damning fingerprint you accidentally left at the crime scene.