MIND control. That, in a nutshell is what Brain Machine Interfaces, a $US24 million ($42.2m) enterprise, hopes to achieve with the new technology it is developing.
The Boston Globe reported that this technology could directly read thoughts from a living brain. And go one step further!
It would be able to instil thoughts as well.
And who's providing the funds for this research programme?
The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defence that once bankrolled the military programme designed to gauge the chances of geopolitical developments, including terrorist attacks.
That project led to the famous Iran-contra scandal.
Sounds scary, but progress has already been made.
The newspaper reported that scientists in New York announced last year that they could control the skittering motions of a rat by implanting electrodes in its brain and steer it around the lab floor as if it were a radio-controlled toy car.
Ninety-Eighty Four come to mind? A Brave New World? A Matrix-like dystopia?
Use some imagination and you could think chips that impose false memories, machines that scan for wayward thoughts and Big Brother watching your every move.
Its developers however point out that the Brain Machine Interfaces programme could offer help to the paralysed rather than encourage a police state. Copyright © 2003 SPH AsiaOne Ltd. All rights reserved.