beaming sensory information directly into the brain - from Sony????

Better treatment for the disabled and better video games from Sony's new patent for beaming sensory information directly into the brain as reported in New Scientist magazine could be the result if this really is an improvement over an existing non-surgical method known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (which activates nerves using rapidly changing magnetic fields, but cannot be focused on small groups of brain cells). Heck brain wave reader Niels Birbaumer, the neuroscientist at the University of Tuebingen in Germany, said the patent was "plausible", but alas Sony says "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."


http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.games/04/07/sony.brain.reut/index.html

Sony aims to beam sights, sounds into brain
Thursday, April 7, 2005
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- If you think video games are engrossing now, just wait: PlayStation maker Sony Corp. has been granted a patent for beaming sensory information directly into the brain.

The technique could one day be used to create video games 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."<snip>

brain-wave machine while reading this. Scary stuff.....

better than real life!

A drug problem will in the future seem like the good old days!

is the day EVERYTHING changes. Strait-to-your-brain porn will instantly become the biggest industry in the world. Anyone will be able to screw any movie star or supermodel they want.. and they will, all day and all night long.

Shagging the (sexual recordings of the) musicians themselves will have to wait.

--p!

In Woody Allen's 1973 movie Sleeper, there was the orgasmatron.

We learn that in the future intercourse is considered too messy and time consuming to bother with, and that civilized people satisfy themselves by stepping inside a box called an Orgasmatron. Gratification is achieved in a matter of seconds. Allen uses this information to set up a humorous scene in which he hides from the police inside the Orgasmatron. Afraid to come out until the police are gone, he is forced to endure its effect far longer than anyone normally would choose to, and when he finally appears he is a disheveled wreck. The humor is the point, but there is something quite compelling about the possibility of having such an experience that adds a nice twist to the scene.

Both of these scenes are entertaining, yet both are stained by attitudes which deny the richness of our sexuality. Always the master of guilt, Woody Allen's Orgasmatron is a compromise between the desire for sex and the guilt that robs us of our enjoyment. It eliminates the complex social interaction of courtship and seduction, the need to perform adequately, and the need to clean up the mess afterwards. Gratification is instant, complete, and guaranteed. Only when he is forced to endure a prolonged session in the device does Allen begin to touch upon the true nature of sex. When we first learn of the machine and what it does we might be curious, but not enough to covet one. It is when we watch Allen stuck inside the thing and we laugh at his predicament that a little corner of our brain wishes we were in his place. Or that we could put our partner in his position.

Beyond the Orgasmatron itself there is the way in which people treated it. A trip to the Orgasmatron was not an end in itself, only a brief interruption in a person's routine, an uninteresting but necessary act not much different that urinating. We do not need a machine to see that attitude in people, and for those of us who value sex and all it encompasses such people are lost souls. That Woody Allen did not scheme and plot to satisfy a craving to be locked inside the Orgasmatron dilutes the effect when it does occur. The fact that it happens by accident gives him yet another opportunity to portray guilt, for had he known what he was in for he might not have allowed himself to go through with it.

I, too, think that when that line is crossed things will get very interesting very quickly. Our schizoid culture will be too weird for anybody but the dope fiends.

and see if they can create a 'madness of sensations' for the sake of democracy everywhere. Or they'll provide it to our troops in the field...

If so, how many layers of tin-foil are required? Does Reynolds Wrap brand tin-foil work better than the generics? Is it shiny side up or shiny side down? Will this brain-beam technology make 'the kool-aid', and the requisite drinking of it, obsolete?

These and other questions will have to be answered before the public is truly safe.

Is it real or is it Sony?

They have no experimental data, no prototype, nothing and still get a patent?

Our patent system is fucked up. Check this out: http://www.cfo.com/blogs/index.cfm/l_detail/3832925

Too bad we can't get Congress to fix this mess.

but I do like the idea!

:-)