Telepathy Becoming a Reality

Here’s an interesting development in science.  Scientists have managed to send a message  directly from one person’s brain into another person’s brain, which is kind of awesome, and kind of scary, too.  It was just one word, Ciao, sent from India to France, via electrodes attached to people’s heads.  Actually, the message went from one person’s mind to a computer, which sent the message to a computer in France, which then sent it into the waiting brains of 3 people, but it’s still impressive.

Pain! Pain!

It means doctors may be able to communicate with people in a coma.  It means that couples may soon put each other to the ultimate test – tell me you love me with the electrodes in your brain.  It means that we will control our house servant robots of the future just with the power of our thoughts.  If you want a beer, it will bring you a beer.  It means police will use this method to interrogate people and in the future, trials will be obsolete – the suspect will just be questioned with electrodes in his head.  That’s the scary part.  That and the ‘do you really love me’ bit.

The biggest problem that I foresee with this technology, though, is miscommunication.  We  often get things wrong when we speak.  Sometimes we use the wrong word in a foreign language, sometimes we slur our words when we are drunk, some people are a little bit deaf.  We get things wrong sometimes when we write, too.  We misread what someone wrote, and send them a blisteringly angry  reply, even though we actually agree with them.

Who’s to say that won’t happen with mind-to-mind conversations?  Maybe your interpretation of ‘meet me for a drink’ is very different from mine?

I welcome the new technology.  I think it will, ultimately, make it possible for people to know each other much better than they do now.  But maybe, just maybe, not understanding each other perfectly is the only thing that keeps us sane.  It gives us plausible deniability.