Suppose certain powerful individuals and organizations have unleashed a viral “wireless human network” which allows people to communicate, directly or indirectly, possible through dreams or a form of shared consciousness, and imagine how this same technology could be abused to allow the inevitable greedy and unscrupulous thieves among us to plunder our very minds for intellectual property, for influence, or direct electrochemical control of our thoughts and our behavior.
How could such a thing have gone so largely unnoticed?
Perhaps people do notice these things but honestly don’t understand or consider what they are experiencing is human technology, and are therefore unwittingly aiding the agenda of those who would use it without our knowledge or consent?
Maybe the idea of a “teaching machine” that violates the mind of those who do the homework, without consent or compensation, to feed into those who will not benefit from those effort anyway, as the process of learning is an essential part of wisdom, and lazy is lazy whether it is being spoon-fed or not, honestly seems like a good idea on the surface to the more ignorant and naïve among us?
Or perhaps the majority are so terrified, so overwhelmed by the context of our modern technological reality they are simply in denial, or have allowed themselves to be convinced what they are perceiving is exactly the sort of “proof” they have been looking for, of some supernatural “connected” experience they are hoping will save them where they are too powerless to take action for themselves?
I have believed for some time certain individuals and corporations wouldn’t be able to resist pushing such technology once it became available. If you Google “Human Wireless Network” you can read about it. Intel and IBM have been involved with developing such technologies (as of course has been the Defense Department) for the better part of a decade, and in the case of the later since as early as the 1950′s. In IBM’s famous “5 in 5″ last year, they announced that “brain reading technology” will be one of the major “breakthroughs” to emerge.
You’d think we’d be pushing immortality research, and colonizing space. Sadly that “one giant leap” is looking more and more to have been straight off a cliff. Indeed, I suspect the control and ownership achieved by such experiments might seem more readily attainable, more exciting (to our latent authoritarian ape-brain), and more fun. Not to mention more profitable, of course.
“Oh my! I have a cell phone! Oh my, I put it in my brain! I put it in YOUR brain! It is all so exciting!”
So, for how many DECADES is this to be the “next great leap for humanity?” Get over it already, I say. It’s a cell phone. Time to incorporate an off switch. Only evil tyrants and overcompensating cowards fear free will.