Defense Department funding brain-machine work

BY GARETH COOK
The Boston Globe

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What most people don't know is that the Department of Defense is already funding a research program with far creepier implications.

The $24 million enterprise called Brain Machine Interfaces is developing technology that promises to directly read thoughts from a living brain -- and even instill thoughts as well.

The research, some of which is being done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is already surprisingly advanced. Monkeys in a laboratory can control the movement of a robotic arm using only their thoughts. And last year scientists in New York announced they could control the skittering motions of a rat by implanting electrodes in its brain, steering it around the lab floor as if it were a radio-controlled toy car.

It does not take much imagination to see in this the makings of a "Matrix"-like cyberpunk dystopia: chips that impose false memories, machines that scan for wayward thoughts, cognitively augmented government security forces that impose a ruthless order on a recalcitrant population. ...

http://www.charleston.net/stories/080503/wor_05darpa.shtml

I'm amazed how much science fiction seems to predict the future. Frightened too because most science fiction paints a bleak future for mankind.