THE CONVERGENCE OF NEUROSCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Is reading minds the future of profit?
All secrets are safe within your head, right? Well, that is not the case anymore! It’s been some time since the scientists have started looking into mind reading. And it’s safe to say that they have made a considerable amount of progress in this field. Let’s recap a little bit..
This is the new tech revolution that is beyond connecting the world and solving social ills. Whilst there is a lot of buzz around industry 4.0 and countries across the world are trying to figure out how to localize these utopia technologies in their ecosystems and businesses there are new developments in the field. I have come to an understanding that businesses are able to keep up with the trends in this fast-paced digital age are those who set the trends and to set the trends you have to be future-focused.
Whilst a lot of money has been spent on marketing to lure customers into buying products or manipulate their decisions through psychology and neuroscience it was not long until technology joined the party. We subtly know by now that TV is one of the mediums that have been used for mind control through physiological and psychological manipulation. The more we watch TV, the more we go into alpha brainwave states, the slow and receptive pattern that accepts images and suggestion into consciousness less critically. A state of hypnosis is induced by the alpha frequency, where you are content to just sit and continue watching. Going from the beta to an alpha wave state can affect how we feel, making it pleasurable to induce an alpha wave relaxed state and watching the TV, thereby making it addictive as a habit to “veg” out. Kicking the habit seems to be hard for many people to do. For some reason, they are drawn to spend time and pay attention to the TV.
With social media platforms added to the mix in this attention economy, time and attention is also fractured in watching frame-breaking split-second scenes and rapid temporal shifts in plots. Reality doesn’t operate this way, but technology has allowed imagery to be manipulated. Images are broken up, shifting from one to the other, requiring our attention to keep up with all the constant changes, leading us to develop attention deficits (ADD, ADHD) and a need for attention-grabbing visual stimulus. Reality doesn’t match up, becomes too slow and boring. And this my friend, is the old economy.
Our brains haven’t been built for this. And whilst we are busy trying to figure out the ethics of mind control, successful businesses are working tirelessly to ensure that we are addicted to their products. It all started when business realized that our brains are not as smart as we would like them to be and not as rational as we would want them to be. Take a look at the tobacco industry, as dangerous as they are, people still smoke. And any smoker will tell you, it’s hard to give up smoking, for this reason, the most recent estimates for the global tobacco market (2017) indicate it is worth approximately US$785 billion.
Just like any other drug, smoking releases a hormone called serotonin which is the happiness hormone. Drugs hack your brain to release the hormone and that is one of the reasons why they are addictive. On the same breath, the platforms we use everyday operate in the same way and that is why they are so addictive, and it’s not a mistake. It doesn’t matter when or where. You could be sitting in a meeting at work, or listening to a lecture at school. You could be at the movies with friends, or at the dinner table with family. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing (as long as you’re not driving). Your fingers are twitching. You find yourself reaching for your pocket again.
You’ve just got to know: did your favorite page post a new update? Did anyone comment on your new profile pic yet? Have you gotten any likes on your clever status update? This is by design and as you try to digest that, I have more. (By the way, I will constantly refresh and check how many claps I got too!)
Companies now are trying to entertain and explore the possibilities of reading your mind. This is going to be a game-changer in the marketing industry. It would be so cool to know what your customer is thinking of you because it will help you position yourself better and manipulate those perspectives, I may sound evil right now but it will happen and it will work. Big tech firms are trying to read people’s thoughts, and no one’s ready for the consequences
In 2017, Facebook announced that it wanted to create a headband that would let people type at a speed of 100 words per minute, just by thinking.
Now, a little over two years later, the social-media giant is revealing that it has been financing extensive university research on human volunteers.
Today, some of that research was described in a scientific paper from the University of California, San Francisco, where researchers have been developing “speech decoders” able to determine what people are trying to say by analyzing their brain signals.
The research is important because it could help show whether a wearable brain-control device is feasible and because it is an early example of a giant tech company being involved in getting hold of data directly from people’s minds. To some neuro-ethicists, that means we are going to need some rules, and fast, about how brain data is collected, stored, and used.
As far as this will raise a privacy question it is interesting how this will unfold, companies have treated data carelessly in the past few years and this time around they’ll mess with your thoughts and I believe this will drive massive profit and your company should start investing in it too because is you don’t, the grave awaits you.
Reading minds is the future of profit!
About the author
A former hacker and trained computer scientist who believes that innovation starts and ends with security. President is a leading expert on threat modeling, and a digital strategy consultant, futurist, technologist, and writer. In addition, he is the Head of Cyber Security at Intelligenx, ambassador at Alliance4AI in Africa and founder of Algorithm an organization specializing in training and research on exponential technologies.
He has spent the past 3 years developing and leading digital skills related training, instructing hundreds of students, pen testers, and start-ups in South Africa. When not teaching, President is busy curating digital strategies for organizations and other misdirected business projects.
