"So add that up: a wireless, remote, brain reading/writing device that can scan, interpret, and communicate with someone across the room, without them even knowing it. Connect that to the Internet... and talk about brainwashing possibilities. What if some hacker could figure out how to write viruses to people's brains? It's actually a little scary." - quote from the Article on CNN.com "The Future of Gaming is All in the Mind."
This may be the most unsetteling article I have read in a while. It sounds as though this electronic company's creation of a brain wave-reading machine that will ultimately allow gamers to play with their minds, not only their hands, is a little too Orson Welles for my taste. What does it say about our culture that this type of machine is being created -- a machine that can read people's minds and then direct virtual actions?
While it sounds intriguing in a science fiction project, Matrix-movie, time-traveling, kind of way, the implications of such a machine seem hard to ignore. While it may free up the hands of gamers and create a new way of looking at the gaming world, it would almost unarguably end up in the hands of dangerous people with dangerous ideas who would use such a machine to propogandize, or "brainwash" as the article notes.
Where is the line drawn between amazing technological advancement and disturbing, robotic-like, tools?
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