Thought crime

When I was a lad I read a lot of science fiction. Many of the classic SF stories revolve around increased mental faculties of some description, either natural or enhanced with technology. In others the technology itself can think, or read minds.

More recently the subject was explored by Hollywood in 'Minority Report'. Like so many blockbuster movies, this is based on a short story by master of the genre Philip K. Dick written in the year of my birth and, unusually for such films, bearing the same name as the story.

Over the years I've been interested to note how often science, although naturally lagging behind science fiction, has eventually caught up. The most well-known example of this is Arthur C. Clarke's prediction of geostationary satellites upon which the world's telecomms networks (including the Internet you're using to read this) now depend. Some scientists have even predicted that a warp-drive such as that used in TV's Star Trek is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

So it was with great interest that I heard a news item some weeks ago describing how scientists have developed a brain scanner that can detect what you're thinking. By interpreting the patterns of brain waves, electrical activity and changes in blood flow, the machine can differentiate between one thought and another. Still in its infancy the machine is crude at present, but will certainly become more accurate with further development.

This opens up some possibilities for colossal social change. Civil rights groups will be sure to take against it and the potential for misuse is clearly enormous, but at a simplistic level it could allow instantaneous democracy for the first time. Problems of security and fraud have always dogged any suggestion of electronic voting, but with ubiquitous brain scanning it would be possible for the reaction of the populace to any new government initiative to be measured almost immediately. No need to sign up for the whole of a manifesto when each of its parts can be tested individually. And if a majority of the people at any given time thought they disliked the incumbent party, out they'd go!

And right there is the reason it'll never happen! Nice to dream though. Welcome to 1984, even if it is about 25 years late!