Hello Minority Report

Brain scan knows what Im going to do next!

www.guardian.co.uk...

How long before groups start to manipulate the technology?

You think cops planting things on you or claiming you tried to assault them is a problem well, wait until they can show the court the brain scan that said you were about to commit a felony.

To add a little twist, here are shoes with GPS:
apnews.myway.com...

Good luck running.

[edit on 9-2-2007 by thisguyrighthere]

This is a very interesting thing, yet I'm sure they won't act on stuff which comes up due to they do not know how accurete it is.
It's just another technique maybe to try out, if all else fails, a new tool is always good though.

Looks like we're all going to have to get the industrial strength tin foil for our hats now. Jeez! Scarey stuff. There's got to be a way to block this.
The shoes might not be a bad thing especially since you can take the activator out of them if you want.
The part about reading peoples mind and intentions brings to mind another question. How would that be done unless the information was on a microchip to be scanned? Another reason to oppose microchipping people?

That article wreaks of product placement/investment generating spin.

They really don't say much about the technology, but they did let a few things slide. Things like "by studying the subject's normal patterns" they are saying that it takes time to tune their device just to pick up expected "intentions".

Basically, I suspect it works like this:
They hook you up to the machine and tell you to wait while you try to clear your mind. After they get a base line reading, they tell you to pick up an apple that is sitting on the desk. They read the differences in the scan. They tell you to pick up that apple another 30 or 40 times and compare the differences. That should give them enough information to identify the "intention" of picking up an apple and they can now predict that you are going to do it before your muscles have time to preform the function.

So... it predicts what you are about to do... about .01 seconds before you do it... providing that you have done it many, many times while hooked up to the machine.

"Thought scanner"?
I call BS.

If the intended targeted audience for sales of the product are disabled people who have never been able to type on a computer or drive a car, etc. then how would it only be able to read things that "have been done many times before"? The so-called "sales pitch" seems to be that if you have limited or no mobility, you can still function by thought alone. How could that be accomplished by people who have not functioned at all? Also, if you were hooked up to a machine and asked to pick up an apple 40-50 times, only 1 or 2 of your intentions would register as "intention to pickup apple", at least for me. After about 2 times of being hooked up to some machine and told to do some mundane, mindless task, my intention would be to quit this stupid activity and go do something else. So the information garnered from me and anyone else even partly awake would not be "intention to pick up an apple". We ignore these new technologies and their potential applications at our peril.

there is nothing wrong with technology, but you can guarentee that some almighty thick people will have access to this technolgy. it isn't technology that is stupid, it is people, and there is no limit to peoples stupidity.

whats the accuracy rate going to be like, if the present top people in this society are at the helm, than this technology is worthless, because technology needs humans to understand it, and humans and these sorts of technologies are useless.


[edit on 2/9/2007 by andy1033]

Originally posted by Galiega
This is a very interesting thing, yet I'm sure they won't act on stuff which comes up due to they do not know how accurete it is.
It's just another technique maybe to try out, if all else fails, a new tool is always good though.

70% Accuracy the boffins make it.

Before the numbers flashed up, they were given a brain scan using a technique called functional magnetic imaging resonance. The researchers then used a software that had been designed to spot subtle differences in brain activity to predict the person's intentions with 70% accuracy.

The protential is incredible just imagine a criminal on early release, Just fit this device to his head pre-programed to inject a k.o should he try to do a crime again.

On the other hand it could be misused by governments to stop the population rebeling against its tyranny.

50 to 100 years from now this may be introduced to tag criminals..

I don't think this is BS, its just the beggining of something which can help us or destroy our freedoms even more.

Originally posted by whitewave
If the intended targeted audience for sales of the product are disabled people who have never been able to type on a computer or drive a car, etc. then how would it only be able to read things that "have been done many times before"?

Because it's not the doing that matters, it's the thinking about doing.

Someone who can't move can still think about moving. Hook 'em up, tell 'em to think about moving their "left arm", snap the brain scan, repeat. After you've calibrated the machine, you feed that patter to a robotic arm. Now, in theory, if the person thinks "move my left arm" the system can tell the robot arm to move.

The thing about this is that it's arbitrary. It doesn't matter what form the "thought" takes in the scan. It only matters that a recognizable pattern than links thought to scan exists.

I've had some interest in the subject for many years... I've done some homework on it.

This system is, IMHO, leap and bounds beyond what they used to do which was attempt to train the human to be able to create identifiable patterns that would patch preset commands.

Anyway, rest assured that this is not a mind-reading device. Or rather it is, but it can only read the glossary and only if you train it to.