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Comment by sdoering | Hacker News Reader

I#m so utterly torn on this. On one hand, this sounds like the first step to a matrix-like learning tool - downloading information into the brain. And is in a nerdy way quite cool.

But on the other hand this totally creeps me out. I am disgusted, that something so possibly sinister is being researched. Something with such a potential for misuse.

After reading this quote: "We will have a way to exchange information across millions of people without using keyboards or voice recognition devices or the type of interfaces that we normally use today," he said.

I just thought:

"We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile."

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I think it would be difficult to find any scientific research that somebody, somewhere didn't consider to have sinister applications. If we discouraged anybody from doing any scientific research that seemed related to what some science fiction program showed a villain using in the future, we wouldn't have any scientific research left to encourage.

But it's been done to some extent. Here's an ongoing human project - twins with conjoined brain(s):

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/magazine/could-conjoined-t...

Tickle one and both know it. There's some discussion of shared personality also. In the end, They're just kids, with a little more sharing than others:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Krista+and+Tatiana+Hogan&...

Every tool can be abused. This is not an argument against developing said tool.

And honestly, this isn't like the nuclear bomb. The benefits of a brain-to-brain communication tool vastly outweigh the possible harms.

How about the end of individual consciousness? What benefits could outweigh that?

Perhaps we should first establish the precise benefits of individual consciousness.

Benefit: "Me, conscious, alive!"

Or: Cogito, ergo sum. ;-)

However we feel about it individually. I am certain that in the long run Brain-Computer Interfaces are an inevitable outcome.

I also believe that becoming "Borg" is inevitable for at leas a subset of human population. Furthermore I think that it will be a good outcome. In the long run.

I would prefer our technology to be tools we can put away at any moment.

A wire popping out of my head makes that a bit hard.

Modern (civilized) human already has tons "wires" sticking out of his head. We are far beyond the level where we could part ways with our technology.

I think you are forgetting the upside to this.

Imagine what it does for peoples empathy when they can feel each others pain.

Imagine how addictive it will be when they can experience the intense emotions of a person being tortured or killed, without any danger to one's self.

There is always another side. I remember seeing this sort of voyeurism explored in Tad Williams' Otherland series.

See also Joe Haldeman's "Forever Peace".

I'd love to see another novel written about the scenario espoused at the end of the book about the groups of people who couldn't have the jack installed. But then I remember that Forever Peace exists. If you haven't read it, don't.

What you're describing also sounds like an effective psychological weapon. It depends on the application but I can imagine (not condone, but imagine) this being mandatory for, say, felony offenders in a prison setting. You've got nothing to do but sit in a cell awash in a cold tide of human suffering.

Especially if this technology becomes advanced to the point that you don't need the network directly, and you can just in essence record someone's emotional state then broadcast it. Instant purgatory.

Then again, if you can feel someone else's pain, presumably you can feel their pleasure too...

That sounds like something out of A Clockwork Orange! Scary indeed.

A prison where the prisoners constantly feel dread and suffering? Welcome to Azkaban.

How about, "Welcome to Prison?"

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