| |
|
| |
|
|
The Mind Reading Machines 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 programmed. The time to do this I was told, took only 30 minutes. This area
was where men and women were trained to be assassins, 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 waves 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
|