Tuesday, February 13, 2007

The Beginning of PreCrime?

Just like something out of Minority Report - this article from UK's The Guardian details recent developments in brain scan technology that allow scientists to actually read someone's mind to see what they intend to do. Amazing, really:

The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.

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'Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall,' said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.
The possibilities this research unlocks raise some real questions about personal freedom, crime control, and the like.

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