A Peculiar Blog

This is dangerous territory.

The idea that on the surface of it has a LOT of potential for good and I
hope that whatever of it that actually get’s developed is used
responsibly for righteous purposes.

However there is a huge amount of potential for harm here. If the senses
and by extension the mind then what’s to prevent an evil person, company
or government from using technology like this to turn people into
mindless robots unable to do anything but what their master commands
because of what their "hacked senses" tell them?

Hacking
Our Five Senses

zdude255 writes "Wired is running an article exploring several
studies of giving the human brain ‘new input devices.’ From seeing
with your sense of touch to entirely new senses such as sensing
direction intuitively, the human brain seems to be capable of
interpreting and using new data on the fly. This offers many
applications from pilots being able to sense the plane’s orientation
to the potential recovery of patients with blindness or ear damage.
(which helps balance).’It turns out that the tricky bit isn’t the
sensing. The world is full of gadgets that detect things humans
cannot. The hard part is processing the input. Neuroscientists don’t
know enough about how the brain interprets data. The science of
plugging things directly into the brain — artificial retinas or
cochlear implants — remains primitive. So here’s the solution: Figure
out how to change the sensory data you want — the electromagnetic
fields, the ultrasound, the infrared — into something that the human
brain is already wired to accept, like touch or sight.’"

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