Technology continues to make breakthroughs to change our lives. I like the cover of the fiftieth anniversary of Private Eye. The shields at the top show what has changed between 1961 and 2011. Mainly it is communication. A typewriter and telephone have become a mobile and printer. Everything is much faster now, and many things are more reliable. This is generally good, though the blackberry 24/7 addicts choose to become slaves to progress.
A leader in this week’s Economist suggested what might be coming next. Seemingly, mind reading technology is getting closer. We might soon be able to look inside each other’s brains and be able to tell what we are thinking. No doubt the facility is many years away from being generally available, but fifty years ago we couldn’t really imagine the internet or wi-fi.
Just imagine the changes this technology would have on the way we lived. Start with relationships. The whole vocabulary would be thrown open. We could no longer quietly leer at someone we fancied without being exposed. Our professed loyalties would be called into question. Our small lies in the interest of harmony would no longer work. Many bums would suddenly look big in many outfits, and have nowhere to hide. A man is supposed to have a sexual thought every eight seconds or so. Imagine if such thoughts were transparent to all.
Things would change, but no doubt we would adapt. Adapting is what humans are very good at. And would it be worse? Initially, it would be very difficult for everyone, but, once things had settled down, perhaps things would be easier. How many women really believe the harmony lies anyway, or believe their man is the only one immune from the eight second urge? The worst thing in any relationship is a lack of trust, and the technology would have the potential to banish that completely. Most of us are more anxious about the fear or what someone is thinking about us than the sure knowledge of what those thoughts are – and most of us are thinking better thoughts of most of our acquaintances than they think we are anyway. We would adapt. The game would change. I sense things would be better.
Then look at illness. The earliest application of the technology would be to improve the lives of the disabled. People with the inability to communicate would suddenly be able to, and lives would be improved immeasurably. Maybe there are other creative brains like Stephen Hawking out there that could be liberated. I also suspect the technology would be decisive in breakthroughs against diseases primarily of the mind, such as addictions. All the junk in our minds could be freed. In most cases, I suspect that could be decisive in helping people to move onto better lives. True, counsellors would lose their capacity for professional dishonesty, but again the advantages would be enormous.
Now take politics. Again, things would change, and change a lot. But for the better or the worse? Many of the more intractable problems in the world start with casual misleading of people. The EU, a good thing, was set up by the elite without really explaining the truth to the public, who were deemed too dumb to understand. Ditto the euro. Such lies are coming apart right now. Cameron doesn’t really want a referendum, just votes. Such lazy lies are coming back to haunt him. The true reasons for the US invasion of Iraq are either justifiable – so we should hear them – or not – and the invasion might have been avoided. Discrimination would be out into the open, and perhaps eliminated by a rare dose of honesty, or at least cast to the outer reaches of society.
The same with firms. When the CEO makes his Christmas speech about his staff being his most important asset he might find himself the turkey, and quite right. Effort would be moved from the dark arts of misleading marketing and lobbying, and invested in innovation to create genuine customer benefits. No more fraud. No more tax avoidance. No more value-destroying confidentiality. I have no problem with any of this.
What surprised me was the tone of the Economist leader, which feared the change. Generally, this magazine embraces technology and innovation, and especially likes things which eliminate inefficiencies. Well, here is a chance to eliminate perhaps the greatest inefficiency of all, and how do they react? They worry about their eight second urges, predict problems with adaptation, and fear misuse by the governments. The internet had all these problems too. Should we have resisted it? I expect better from my favourite magazine.
Perhaps the leader writer, like me, has been spooked by his or her computer lately. I have seen a step change in the last six months at the ability of my computer to know everything about me, and find it scary. Do you feel the same? When I reflect on it though, I find this technology exciting. True, it can be misused, and I like to have a few secrets, even from my computer. But we will adapt, we will move on, and the benefits to society can be huge. Bring it on.
One last argument in favour of mind reading. I read a different article this week about Amanda Knox, in the Guardian weekly. Seemingly, most of us found her guilty because of her face. Her features make her look a bit foxy. We were a bit titillated by the stories of what may have gone on in Perugia, egged on by our tabloids, and jumped to conclusions about poor Amanda. According to the article, we do this sort of thing unconsciously all the time, making judgements about people based on how they look. I knew this before, and understood it as a reason for some discrimination and a need for caution against bias, for example in job interviews. But this article took it to a new level, for indeed a part of me had done exactly as the article suggested, and found Amanda guilty, despite any real evidence available to me.
Once we all have our personal mind readers as an app in our mobile phones, we won’t make such mistakes again. This will be scary. Probably it will be after my time, but at the rate things progress these days who can know that for sure? Personally, I hope the technology comes sooner rather than later. By then I’ll be so old that eight seconds will have become at least a minute anyway.
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