Samoth

More random linkage, ranging from the fascinating to the somewhat disturbing, both from Wired (so apply appropriate amounts of salt to the reporting)...

Firstly the tale of a man's quest to be able to appreciate Ravel's Bolero again after receiving a computerised cochlear implant. What's interesting is the amount that hacking the software capabilities of the device changes things so much, and the plasticity of the brain in learning to make sense of the new stimulus provided. It's also interesting that this tends in the direction of adding hardware to the brain, and providing access to novel senses that weren't previously possible, which has some interesting implications in terms of how people might change in the future, but also what it means to consider yourself a 'normal human' - how much of your brain function can you replace or augment technologically before you start to be considered as no longer 'human' in some sense. After all, we accept happily that people with glasses and normal hearing aids are perfectly human. Artificial limbs don't seem to cause us to judge people as less human - but the thought experiment of gradually replacing bits of brain with, say, silicon chips, providing identical functionality does lead to interesting questions as to whether there's a point where some threshold is crossed and it's no longer a 'proper' brain but just a 'mere computer' :) (This is explored in rather more fun detail in one of the thought experiments in The Mind's I, which I'd heartily recommend to anyone entertained by this kind of idea.)

Secondly, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging being used to detect deception. This is using brain scanners to determine the brain activity that takes place when people are being deceptive - giving something like a 'super lie detector' - and claiming to offer vastly better accuracy than polygraphs and the like, which are notoriously unreliable. This is full on thought police stuff, as it's about what people are thinking (or how they're thinking it) rather than about what they're saying per-se. There are already companies looking to commercialise this, and plans afoot for a remotely deployable version of this that can do the reading at a distance, without the subject's consent. One of the companies commercialising it hints at it being a more socially acceptable alternative to torture. What fun.

On a more personal note, I'm still ill. Have had a rather more successful visit to the doctors who now reckon it's not Gastroenteritis, but probably Giardia instead, which does fit all my lovely symptoms all too well. A nice round of tests for me now to work out if that's what it is, and maybe I'll see the end of this finally - it's only been nearly 2 months of feeling ghastly every day now....