Topic: Sony beams straight into your brain!!

[BlackNMild2k1]

Quote
If you think video games are engrossing now, just wait: PlayStation maker Sony Corp (SNE.N). has been granted a patent for beaming sensory information directly into the brain.

The technique could one day be used to create videogames in which you can smell, taste, and touch, or to help people who are blind or deaf.

The U.S. patent, granted to Sony researcher Thomas Dawson, describes a technique for aiming ultrasonic pulses at specific areas of the brain to induce "sensory experiences" such as smells, sounds and images.

"The pulsed ultrasonic signal alters the neural timing in the cortex," the patent states. "No invasive surgery is needed to assist a person, such as a blind person, to view live and/or recorded images or hear sounds."

Niels Birbaumer, a neuroscientist at the University of Tuebingen in Germany, told New Scientist he had looked at the Sony patent and "found it plausible." Birbaumer himself has developed a device that enables disabled people to communicate by reading their brain waves.

A Sony Electronics spokeswoman told the magazine that no experiments had been conducted, and that the patent "was based on an inspiration that this may someday be the direction that technology will take us."

Source

It appears that Sony has managed to patent a theory??  And do I really want them messing with my head - literally?

[Don'tHate742]

OH MY GOD! This is a very dumbed down version of my idea!

What is my idea you asked?

Well imagine a helmet that can read your brain waves. Where when you tell yourself to walk, it knows that your walking. Don't get it?

Well this device could be used to see what the hell people in comas are thinking. In future editions, there could be games where all you have to do is put on a helmet and close your eyes. It knows that you want to move, it knows that you want to jump at that point in time, but in reality, your not moving or jumping....your sitting, or laying.

CRAZY!

[Mario]

I don't like the idea of anyone literally messing with my brain... but it would be cool if they could find another way.

[KDR_11k]

Networked, intelligent processors. Independant robots. Mind control systems. F#ck, Sony is making the Matrix a reality!

[Ian Sane]

Technology that can read brain waves and transmit information directly into the brain?  This is going to be a HUGE moral discussion if it ever becomes reality.  Or at least it will be until they use the technology to alter the opinions of those opposed to the idea.  You can't fight the power when the power literally can read and control your thoughts.  This is scary stuff.  

[Don'tHate742]

Could you learn "everything" in an instant if they could transmit information directly to your sub-conscience (sp)?

[BlackNMild2k1]

I could potentially learn spanish while I sleep one night and calculus the next night.  

While I see the potential of this technology, I really don't trust the people that would be behind it.  Sony always seems to leave big gaping backdoors in their software and hardware, and the last thing I would need is some hacker tapping into my brain while I was innocently trying to do something else.  

[KnowsNothing]

I'm with Mario on this one: I'm staying the HELL away from anything that can directly manipulate my mind.

What's this with the patenting though?  I don't know anything about patent laws or whatever, but this seems similar to me patenting a time machine or an interstellar transport beam.....  

[Bill Aurion]

Um, so...Don't you need to be able to technically produce something to patent it?  I think I'll go patent flying cars now...

[matt oz]

I'm gonna patent hunger!  Then I'm gonna team up with Sony to  make everyone hungry with their brain waves.

Then you'll all have to pay me royalties for being hungry.

[Kirby (cheat wizard)]

Errr Bill Aurion flying cars already exsist they,re like helecopters only with the propela on the bottom and it's shaped like a car.
I think you could only patent idears that are possible within a certan amount of time I guess.

[Avinash_Tyagi]

Well personally I hope nothing like this every makes it into production, can you imagine the evil uses of technology that could send information directly into your brain, bypassing all filters?

And how far a leap would it be before they could read information from your brain without your knowledge, or even worse rewrite sections of your mind, erase memories, change personality?

[Bill Aurion]

Quote
Originally posted by: Kirby (cheat wizard)
Errr Bill Aurion flying cars already exsist they,re like helecopters only with the propela on the bottom and it's shaped like a car.
I think you could only patent idears that are possible within a certan amount of time I guess.

Not a flying car...

[The Omen]

You have to have an initial prototype/drawing in order to show/explain how the idea would work in order to get a patent.  So I assume Sony just drew a crude sketch of a persons skull, with a laser beam burning a hole through it..."here ya go! Patent pending!"!