One day the progression of communication technologies will advance to a point where we achieve telepathy. What is today on par with super power status, is approaching the ability to be laid out as a sequence of foreseeable steps in our future. One of the greatest benefits of telepathy is that it is a communication of thoughts in no specific language. Language is beautiful and diverse, but it is also a barrier. One that adds an ethereal separator to the borders of Earths' countries. One of the amazing things in the recent announcement of Google Wave was a robot that translates an instant message conversation in real time between any of 40 different languages. These are the beginnings of enabled new world.
Text translation is a far cry from telepathy though. Obviously, understanding how our mind actually stores representations of things, actions, and descriptors completely enough to read them from our mind is a much more daunting task than language translation. But it has begun. It seems likely that this mapping of brain activity to conveyable symbols will be unique to each individual, and telepathy enabling devices would have to be tuned to the users brain somehow. I just hope that "somehow" doesn't involve reading every word in the dictionary and pressing a button on the top of my head after each one.
One of the obvious concerns about telepathy is restraint. We are fortunate enough to be able to revise our thoughts before we speak them, saving ourselves from numerous unfortunate situations. A telepathy device would have to include some method of reliably controlling what actually gets out. People have a hard enough time getting along as it is. Though I think it's debatable if some forced honesty might not do us more good than harm.
This raises the question of what modes of operation we might have. For example, we probably wouldn't want devices that just read other peoples minds. We would want to transmit only, retaining an individuals choice to interact or not. This does complicate the scenario of a 3+ way telepathic conversation. That might involve some kind of interaction with the device that enables you to choose multiple people to transmit a message to. Unfortunately, to have this kind of control, it is likely to require something that is surgically attached to the brain.
So, let's begin with real time translation and speculate some further steps that might lead to telepathy.
Hey, I didn't say it would be easy, just that it was a foreseeable progression!
The reality of what lies in our future is likely a bit different than the comic book character that can read everyones thoughts. Where we will take it will be much more grand though. Coupled with the power of interconnected networks, we won't have the silly limitation of needing to be in close proximity. I stumbled across this video while researching for this article. Hilariously entertaining - but it's caution is certainly worth keeping in mind.
Text translation is a far cry from telepathy though. Obviously, understanding how our mind actually stores representations of things, actions, and descriptors completely enough to read them from our mind is a much more daunting task than language translation. But it has begun. It seems likely that this mapping of brain activity to conveyable symbols will be unique to each individual, and telepathy enabling devices would have to be tuned to the users brain somehow. I just hope that "somehow" doesn't involve reading every word in the dictionary and pressing a button on the top of my head after each one.
One of the obvious concerns about telepathy is restraint. We are fortunate enough to be able to revise our thoughts before we speak them, saving ourselves from numerous unfortunate situations. A telepathy device would have to include some method of reliably controlling what actually gets out. People have a hard enough time getting along as it is. Though I think it's debatable if some forced honesty might not do us more good than harm.
This raises the question of what modes of operation we might have. For example, we probably wouldn't want devices that just read other peoples minds. We would want to transmit only, retaining an individuals choice to interact or not. This does complicate the scenario of a 3+ way telepathic conversation. That might involve some kind of interaction with the device that enables you to choose multiple people to transmit a message to. Unfortunately, to have this kind of control, it is likely to require something that is surgically attached to the brain.
So, let's begin with real time translation and speculate some further steps that might lead to telepathy.
- Real time language translation
- Wearable messaging devices that deliver text or audio directly to your eyes or ears
- Safe, reliable method of interfacing a wireless transmission device to a human brain
- Better understanding of methods used by the brain to store symbols, and development of software that maps this in an individual to a universal encoding
- Combination of transmission implant and mapping software to produce a telepathy implant which replaces translating wearable devices
Hey, I didn't say it would be easy, just that it was a foreseeable progression!
The reality of what lies in our future is likely a bit different than the comic book character that can read everyones thoughts. Where we will take it will be much more grand though. Coupled with the power of interconnected networks, we won't have the silly limitation of needing to be in close proximity. I stumbled across this video while researching for this article. Hilariously entertaining - but it's caution is certainly worth keeping in mind.
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