Michael Miles's blog

There’s a line from an old Broadway musical, Most Happy Fella, that says, “Oh you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking…” but it soon that won’t be true. A segment on Sixty Minutes, the TV commentary of Sunday, June 28, centered on neuroscience. It showed how patterns of thought could be read with a CT brain scan. The thought was relatively simple — a subject was given a word like hammer and the brain scan immediately showed a pattern. This pattern was replicated in other subjects. In effect, the brain scan read the subject’s thought.

The neuroscientist explained that this work was only the beginning. He talked about research techniques become more sophisticated so that it will be possible to read much more complex thoughts, and even to direct some kind of beam at a person and read what the person is thinking. It might even be used to learn what people in a crowd are thinking without them ever knowing that their thoughts were being read.

What a boon to merchandisers, explained the neuroscientist. Stores could help patrons find what they want easily, I suppose by directing them to the place where they can get the wanted item. So the brain scanner is not just reading thoughts, but also directing them.

The neuroscientist said that it wouldn’t be taking decades; it might be with us in just a few years. He said this with a great smile, as though it was the best thing in the world and there were no morals involved with his project. It seemed to me that he morphed into a great shark. It would be more than interesting to know who funds such research.

With the onslaught of technology that listens to our phone calls, directs some of what comes up on our computer screens, and who knows what else, our privacy is fast fading away. Maybe it is t only old cranks like me who think that privacy is essential to our way of life. Our thoughts may be the last bastion of privacy, but technology is promising to take even that away from us.