Thursday 15 August 2013

Mind Control & the Internet



Technology these days is scary. Especially how rapidly it’s changed in the last 20 odd years. Sue Halpern in her article Mind control and the internet talks about how earlier this year universities implanted people with chips and attached electrodes to their brain allowing them to control items just by thinking about it. Michael Chorost had a brain-computer interface implanted in his head after he went deaf. In his book, according to Halpern, he is now a cheerleader for the rest of us getting kitted out with our own, truly personal, in-brain computers. In her article, Halpern also talks about how when you search online the results are targeted for you and your specific likes and based on your previous searches. Halpern said the search process is “personalised.”
“It’s not difficult to see where this could lead—how easily anything with an agenda (a lobbying group, a political party, a corporation, a government) could flood the echo chamber with information central to its cause. (This, in fact, is what has happened… with climate change.) Who would know?”

You are not a gadget—yet.

Halpern, Sue (2011) "Mind Control & the Internet", New York Review of Books June 23.

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