It's Not 1984!

Despite the numerous fascinating techniques that have been developed to examine the mechanics of the brain, I believe it would be even more interesting to have a mind-reading device, simply because it would be amazing to see if something as immeasurable as human thoughts being converted into a format that we could understand through a machine. It would be very frightening to think of the government to use this as a device to invade the privacy of our own minds! The development of any new exciting technology always comes with the risk of it falling into the wrong hands and ultimately becoming a weapon. However, if this technology was carefully researched, harnessed and most of all, protected to be used for certain purposes only, it could mean exciting things for the future. Nothing terrifies me more than a world as described in George Orwell's 1984, which in my opinion would be the kind of world we would risk living in if we let this technology run away from us. If I were to invent this machine, I would recommend its use for scientific and research purposes, not political. We could use this to perhaps tweak social neuroscience experiments to understand what kinds of thoughts accompany the activation of certain brain regions. Emotion is so nuanced and complex that it would be more interesting to discover just what kinds of thoughts are running through someone's head instead of just attributing a vague emotion like "anger" or "fear" to a brain region. Let's not let our thirst for knowledge run away with us though! If I had developed this technology I would sell it only to scientists and keep it out of the realm of politics because that is where the most abuse would occur, plus as much as I love George Orwell, I don't want to live in his world.