The Mind Reading Machines Note: This is not as strange as it sounds. I saw
machines at Teller AF Base that were on peoples heads, (A highly
restricted area) and when I ask, I was told they were being programed.
The time to do this I was told, took only 30 minutes. This area was
where men and women were trained to be assasins, prostitutes, etc.
circa 1982.......Col.
Skywatchers,
In response to Lingenfelter's thoughtful article on Mind
Control experiments, I would like to submit to you this article I
wrote 17 years ago on the mind-reading machines (just think of how
much progress we may have made in that time):
COMING - THE MIND READING MACHINES (excerpts) The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) has
spent over $1 million a year under agency contracts at the University
of Illinois, UCLA, Stanford, MIT, and the University of Rochester to
interpret an individual's brain waves. At UCLA they are working on
the use of the EEG to control machines. It may be only a matter of
time before the machines will be able to read a person's brain waves
and determine just what that person is thinking.
At this time it is necessary to use electrodes
placed on a person's head. A small special-purpose computer
scans the peaks and valleys of the EEG to determine what the person is
concentrating on and what he is ignoring. The computer makes a
brain-wave graph which is interpreted by scientists. At MIT, however,
scientists are studying magnetic brain waes that can produce graphs
much like the electrical brain waves now being measured. Magnetic
brain waves can be picked up over a foot away from the subject and
amplified as if the brain were a radio transmitter. By the 21st
century it may be possible to detect and amplify brain waves over
several miles. It is not beyond the imagination to picture
globe-encircling satellites that carry on-board mind-reading machines
that scan the earth.
Psychologist Dr. Adam V. Reed of Rockefeller
University seems to be one man who thinks implanting a computer in the
human brain would be a good idea. This, he contends, would make it
possible to read other people's minds. He says, "Once the neural
language of human thought and memory has been decoded, it will be
possible to program a computer in it and to transfer programs directly
to the computer from the appropriate neurons of the human brain.
Ideally the computer of the future should be an electronic extension
of the natural brain...it
should share with the brain the implementation of the informational
processes which we think of as our minds. It should also cease to be
an external, consciously manipulated artifact and become no different,
from the user's viewpoint than any natural part of his brain. The
limiting factor in the development of directly linked computers is
likely to be our knowledge of the location of relevant neurons and of
the internal code of our minds."
It is rumored that the Soviets have deciphered "the
internal code of our minds." We know the Soviets have experimented
with mind-altering microwaves. A Pentagon
agency report said, "Sounds and possibly even words which appear to be
originating intracranially can be induced by signal modulation at very
low average power densities", and added that "combinations of
frequencies and other signal characteristics to produce other
neurological effects may be feasible in several years." The report
said that along with microwave hearing, the Soviets have also studied
various changes in body chemistry and functioning of the brain
resulting from exposure to microwaves and other frequencies of
electromagnetic radiation.
Dr. Jacques Vidal, head of the Brain Computer
Interface Project at UCLA is experimenting with man/machine
interfaces which can provide a motor link between a person and his
surroundings. Noting that some people were becoming concerned with
the implications of his experiments, he stated, "One application
directly in mind is in the case of cerebral palsy victims, where there
is no motor control, but eye control."
Vidal stressed that the mind-machine link he was
talking about was from human to computer and not the other way around.
Dr. Lawrence Pinneo of the Stanford Research
Institute has had success with a computer that read his mind.
"Basically, the computer works on the principle that thoughts are
simply silent words," he said. The computer relies on brain wave
tracings that show distinctive patterns which correlate to individual
words, whether spoken or thought.
Pinneo has been conducting experiments in which the
subject dons an aviator-type helmet equipped with wires that
record brain waves. The thoughts show up on a television screen. If
the machine recognizes the word "up" in the subject's thoughts, it
moves a dot up. It moves accordingly for the words down, left, right,
slow, fast, stop, and others. The top score for the computer on a
single silent word is 75%. The computer is currently very limited in
the words it can interpret and Pinneo hopes to bypass the need for
filing the whole dictionary in the machine's memory system by the use
of "phonemes". Phonemes are the smallest units of speech and there
are only 46.
The possibilities of the machine's use "are limited
only by imagination." Because the project is funded by the Pentagon,
Pinneo is often asked if the computer might someday be used to control
the thoughts of citizens. "The Department of Defense is the only
agency in such funding", he said, "It's up to the people to be
vigilant against misuse."
Dr. Anlinker with Ames Reseaarch Center in California
said research is angled toward "how to tune in on the brain's secrets"
and how to "read the mind". Dr. Anlinker added:
"Could these thought-control processes and mind reading generate a
police state? Of course, its possible. But those are things we must
live with. Science must progress."
Dr. J.E. Zimmerman, a physicist at the government's
Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado says that he picks up brain
waves without being physically connected to the subject. "A very
sensitive meter, placed near the head, detects magnetic emissions from
the brain, and this information is fed into computers which analyze
the brain wave patterns. It's quite feasible that this machine can be
developed to such a level that it can be used over a distance -
without the subject knowing it."
Despite the good intentions of the various scientists
working on these mind-reading experiments, time and again, each have
stated that these machines could be misused. Its exciting to think
that machines could do our bidding by merely thinking a thought, but
then it is somewhat terrifying to think that someone could read our
thoughts without our knowledge. Could a computer not only read brain
waves, but control brain waves in a neurocybernetic loop? A computer
could be programmed to program human behavior and who, ultimately,
does that programming?
This article was written from source articles published
in the L.A. Times and Computerworld sometime in 1979.
Bill Hamilton
by William Hamilton © 1980
Executive Director
SKYWATCH INTERNATIONAL