Not so much an ad, more a brainwash
By Billy Simpson
featureseditor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk30 April 2004
THAT voice inside your head may not be God talking to you, after all. It could be a beer commercial.
If you start hearing voices in your head and wonder where they are coming from, chances are it won't be the Almighty. I mean, is it likely that God would take time out of a busy schedule to plug Budweiser to the faithful?
Hardly.
No. We are about to enter the age of "hypersonic messaging." A message that is not so much an advert as a brainwash.
One day soon you may be walking past a drinks dispensing machine and suddenly hear ice-cubes being clinked in a glass, the shusssssh and glug, glug of a refreshing beverage being poured and develop an irresistible urge to have a drink. And it will all seem to be happening inside your head so you'll imagine it's your own idea.
You might think this is pretty much what the advertising industry do already but, with the aid of the new neuro technology coming out of neuroscience, they'll be able to do with sound what those flashing subliminal messages do on screen. You won't know you've been hit.
Liberal voices are already being raised against hypersonic messaging, calling it "mind control" and brainwashing.
And wonder what would happen if hypersonic messaging fell into the hands of an unscrupulous government......hold on, hold on. I can hear something coming through. The voice keeps saying "Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes."
Now either Tony Blair is canvassing on the European referendum or Molly Bloom is having another soliloquy.
The new neuro technology has already produced memory management drugs to help people in shock to remember what shocked them and other drugs to block out bad memories.
Of course we, in this province, would probably have fewer bad memories if some of the folk who caused them were in jail instead of in Parliament.
• SAD BUT TRUISM "The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell." - Bertrand Russell.
• IRIS - A SCAN TOO FAR
I have no quarrel with the concept of ID cards and I am aware that technology has already made bar codes of us all. Being identified by fingerprints, pictures or DNA for the card is fine by me but I worry about the fact that they plan to scan your iris just to make sure.
The world is getting more vicious by the day. The criminal fraternity wouldn't hesitate for a second to poke somebody's eye out and use it to get through a scan-check. I mean, these days, they'll kill you to steal your kidney or any other saleable organs, so nicking your iris wouldn't phase them a bit.
Wouldn't a voice print be easier? They are already making a credit card that won't work unless it hears its owner's voice. That seems fairly foolproof.
Admittedly, there is always the tiny risk that your card could fall into the hands of Jon Culshaw, but since he'll already be able to access the bank accounts of President Bush and Russell Crowe, he won't need mine.
Voices seem to be in the news this week. Poor Britney Spears has been criticised for miming to a recording on stage instead of singing live without the aid of electronic voice enhancement.
Lots of people mime. I was shocked the first time I learned that Rita Hayworth, star of so many glossy Hollywood musicals in the 1940s, couldn't carry a tune and was ghost voiced by someone who could.
There is a lot of that around. In the classic Bogart film "To Have and Have Not," the young Lauren Bacall's singing voice was supplied by a young boy soprano who grew up to be crooner Andy Williams. A near perfect piece of useless information. And in all the times I've played Trivial Pursuit, that question never came up.