http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130404-will-we-ever-read-minds/1
Seung Schik-Yoo of the Harvard Medical School has devised a way of commanding a rat, in a laboratory setting, to wag it's tail on his command by sending ultrasound pulses to it's nervous system. Now it does sound fairly simple and harmless, but think about it. The ability to control another creature's or more importantly another person's mind and giving it orders carries a lot more serious ramifications than is obvious at the first glance. It could be the first step towards achieving the abilities of Professor Charles Xavier from the X-Men universe. It could be used to cure a number of neurological disabilities, people suffering from severe neurological disorders end up spending their lives in a wheelchair unable to move, speak or communicate in anyway. The famous British Cosmologist, Physicist and author, Professor Stephen Hawking (image below) suffers from one such motor neuron disease, which means his body is almost completely paralysed and he communicates through his custom made wheelchair fitted with a speech generating device.
But on the other hand it can also be used in a number of ways that would not necessarily be for the achievement of the greater good (as is the case with most scientific innovations). Imagine being able to control people's minds!! Isn't that what all the bad boys want/wanted in History, Hollywood movies, comics and video games etc. Even though the contemporary culture of mass consumerism paired with the media and advertising agencies are doing a pretty good job at controlling populations en masse, this idea of being able to command every single move that a person/creature makes can take the definition of George Orwell's Big Brother to a whole new level. If you could control anyone's mind and give them orders, who would you choose to control and what would you make them do? I'd love to know how you would use this 'superpower', please leave your answers in the comment section below.
If one day we do command a person to do our bidding, could that process also be reversed to read a person's mind?
Maisam Abbas
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