Can You Read My Mind?

The answer to that may soon be an unqualified yes. Imagine a world where everyone can see through every white lie. Where bluffing is impossible. Where the intentions of terrorists or unscrupulous car sales men can be known immediately.

60 Minutes ran a story on research being done on applying MRI imaging technology to the question of reading our thoughts. The long and short of it is, they already can on a rudimentary level. Show a person a picture of a hammer...and the computer can tell. It turns out that we all use similar parts of the brain, to think about the same objects. Reporter Leslie Stahl and 60 Minutes assc. producer Meghan Frank put the concept up to the test.

"You know, every time I walk into that scanner room and I see the person's brain appear on the screen, when I see those patterns, it is just incredible, unthinkable," neuroscientist Marcel Just told Stahl.

He calls it "thought identification."

Whatever you want to call it, what Just and his colleague Tom Mitchell at Carnegie Mellon University have done is combine fMRI's ability to look at the brain in action with computer science's new power to sort through massive amounts of data. The goal: to see if they could identify exactly what happens in the brain when people think specific thoughts.

They did an experiment where they asked subjects to think about ten objects - five of them tools like screwdriver and hammer, and five of them dwellings, like igloo and castle. They then recorded and analyzed the activity in the subjects' brains for each.

"The computer found the place in the brain where that person was thinking 'screwdriver'?" Stahl asked.

"Screwdriver isn't one place in the brain. It's many places in the brain. When you think of a screwdriver, you think about how you hold it, how you twist it, what it looks like, what you use it for," Just explained.

He told Stahl each of those functions are in different places.

When we think "screwdriver" or "igloo" for example, Just says neurons start firing at varying levels of intensity in different areas throughout the brain. "And we found that we could identify which object they were thinking about from their brain activation patterns," he said.

"We're identifying the thought that's occurring. It's…incredible, just incredible," he added.

"Are you saying that if you think of a hammer, that your brain is identical to my brain when I think of a hammer?" Stahl asked.

"Not identical. We have idiosyncrasies. Maybe I've had a bad experience with a hammer and you haven't, but it's close enough to identify each other's thoughts. So, you know, that was never known before," Just explained.

60 Minutes asked if his team was up for a challenge: would they take associate producer Meghan Frank, whose brain had never been scanned before, and see if the computer could identify her thoughts? Just and Mitchell agreed to give it a try and see if they could do it in almost real time.

Just said nobody had ever done an instant analysis like this.

Inside the scanner, Meghan was shown a series of ten items and asked to think for a few seconds about each one.

"If it all comes out right, when she's thinking 'hammer,' the computer will know she's thinking 'hammer'?" Stahl asked.

"Right," Mitchell replied.

Within minutes, the computer, unaware of what pictures Meghan had been shown and working only from her brain activity patterns as read out by the scanner, was ready to tell us, in its own voice, what it believed was the first object Meghan had been thinking about.

The computer correctly analyzed the first three words - knife, hammer, and window, and aced the rest as well.

According to Just, this is just the beginning.

Another thing researchers have learned, is to tell if a person is familiar with a certain environment or set of circumstances. For instance it can tell from scanning your brain, whether or not you have seen a particular scene in your past or not.

In the meantime, Haynes is working on something he thinks may be even more effective: reading out from your brain exactly where you've been. Haynes showed Stahl an experiment he created out of a video game.

He had Stahl navigate through a series of rooms in different virtual reality houses.

"Now I would put you in a scanner and I would show you some of these scenes that you've seen and some scenes that you haven't seen," he told her.

Stahl recognized the bar. "And right at this moment, we would be able to tell from your brain activity that you've already seen this environment before," Haynes explained.

Not only is the ability to interpret thoughts by scanning the brain, but the other side of the problem, i.e. remote scanning of people's thoughts, is getting closer as well.

For now, it's impossible to force someone to have his or her brain scanned, because the subject has to lie still and cooperate, but that could change.

"There are some other technologies that are being developed that may be able to be used covertly and even remotely. So, for example, they're trying to develop now a beam of light that would be projected onto your forehead. It would go a couple of millimeters into your frontal cortex, and then receptors would get the reflection of that light. And there's some studies that suggest that we could use that as a lie detection device," Wolpe said.

He said we wouldn't know if our brains were being scanned. "If you were sitting there in the airport and being questioned, they could beam that on your forehead without your knowledge. We can't do that yet, but they're working on it."

I seem to remember that Microsoft has also been developing remote sensing software for computers and cell phones which can determine the emotional state of a user, and use that information to determine whether to offer assistance to users displaying frustration or anger. It doesn't take much imagination to make the leap from a cell phone reading emotions to a cell phone which acts as a hand held lie detector.

There is an interesting book, by the name of The Truth Machine by James Halperin which explores a world where reading the intentions of others becomes ubiquitous through out human society, world wide. The premise of the book being that this technology is an absolute requirement in a world where an individual or small group has the ability to inflict great harm. In short, in his story, the technology is used by individuals and institutions alike to determine the honesty and intentions of people, having a transformational impact on human behavior.

Good or Bad, this technology is coming like a freight train. Will it be the transformational force laid out by Halperin? Or will it lead to a security state more insidious than even Orwell or Stalin could have imagined? I guess we'll see.

New Technology Tuesday

Technology, particularly the accelerating rate of technological change and the vectors it follows, offer both the promise of hope for our future as a species and a planet, and in the opinions of many carry it's doom. It is industrial technology which has percipitated the climate crisis we face today, and it will be technology which will provides alternatives, along with changed human attitudes and behaviors, to help us steer away from it...hopefully.

I'm not sure if it's fair to say that it's technology (or misapplied technology and science, like say the application of behavioral psychology in marketing and media to promote consumerism for an example) or human behavior which is the culprit in our out of control ride to potential extinction.

I still hold the optimism of better living through science which I acquired as a youth, but I very much understand the menace of unintended consequences, particularly as it has applied to industrial pollution. Many of the wonders of the last century, turned out to be the bane of those who came into contact with them, whether we are discussing the wonderful insulating properties and applications of asbestos, or the insidious lung disease it caused in so many people, just to name one example.

Here are a few of the new developments in technology which I find hopeful. I'd be interested to hear your opinions on any of the items highlighted, or the general role of technology in our future.

* Better control of fusion power offers a lot of promise for escaping our addiction to fossil fuel. Researchers at MIT have developed a method for managing the hydrogen plasma in a fusion reactor. h/t Kurzweilai.com.

MIT's doughnut-shaped fusion reactor, the Alcator C-Mod, uses magnets to confine hydrogen in a turbulent, electrically charged state of matter called a plasma. By infusing large amounts of energy into the plasma, physicists can kick off fusion reactions that, in turn, release large amounts of energy. The MIT reactor is too small to generate practical fusion reactions that generate enough energy to keep themselves going--what's called a burning plasma. But the researchers have been working on ways to achieve this state in larger reactors, such as the planned International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

* Australia plans to use market trading to help predict eco-disasters and in the future to help guide government environmental policy.

The Australian Knowledge Exchange works by giving traders A$100,000 (US$65,000) play money and 1000 stocks in each of five reservoirs in New South Wales. The stocks pay out each month according to the level of the dam. If the dam is full, they are worth $100. Traders can profit by buying stocks for less than their final value, or by selling them for more.

..."This approach has huge potential in the environmental sector where there is a lot of uncertainty," says Josh Donlan of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and Advanced Conservation Strategies, a Utah-based NGO.

The incentives are clearly not monetary - the trader who does best wins a paltry A$50 - but Whitten hopes people will be drawn to take part in what is a "public good" enterprise, much like Wikipedia. Although anyone can become a trader, the team's ideal players would be farmers, weather forecasters, people who live close to reservoirs, and computer modellers. The market currently has about 50 traders, and the team hope at least 50 more will join.

Donlan says the market's real value will come from the wide-ranging knowledge of investors. For example, when it comes to biodiversity, rather than rely solely on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which may not account for all regional variations, markets that capture local knowledge could give a more accurate prediction of the size of bird populations, say.

* The Auto Industry is developing strategies for successful transition to electric plug in vehicles. The industry is considering implementing community out-reach strategies for plug-in electric vehicles first to make sure that they receive adequate support for success.

Car companies intend to target places where governments are willing to provide incentives to purchase plug-in electric cars and install charging stations. Utilities, too, need to be involved so that the grid doesn't become stressed by a rush of cars.

...Nissan will stage (their plug-in) car's initial introduction in the fall of 2010 in region's that have the right infrastructure in place, said Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan Americas. That will help it prepare for "mass market" availability in 2012, he said.

It is establishing "public-private partnerships" with governments and utilities in an effort to ensure things like favorable permitting and available inspectors for charging stations, Perry said. So far, it has agreements with Tennessee, Oregon, and Sonoma County, Calif., to set up a network of charging stations in public places.

"As we think about the individual consumer, you don't want it to be an open question--Ok, I want an electric vehicle, what do I do? We want to have those answers," said Perry. "It's not a technical hurdle. It's more a coordination and logistics hurdle."

I really look forward to plug in cars hitting the market. It doesn't address the fundamental problems of sustainability, but it does offer a solution to the contribution of vehicle emissions in climate change. The picture at the top of the post is the chinese battery manufacturer BYD's dual electric/gasoline car, the e6 (h/t treehugger.com)

My path to environmentalism and sustainability

"The Future comes apace" - William Shakespeare

Growing up, among my passions was a love for the genre of science fiction. The yarns of Robert Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov not to mention the countless other imaginative and prescient authors of the 50's, 60's and 70's...leading up the the writers of today, painted a world of breath taking change, beauty and menacing danger to mankind. The abstract worlds of the future they painted are, in many ways, quickly becoming the tangible world I find myself living in today.

The warnings those early stories gave, echo in my head each day as I read about peak oil, changing climate, population growth, degradation of environment and the rapid rate of technological change we are experiencing today. While there are many aspects of the challenges we face which cause me great concern, I still maintain much of the same sense of wonder and optimism about the future we are entering, as I did as a teenager, first dipping the big toe of my imagination in the swirling water of the competing futures that science fiction offered.

I am now in my fourth decade on this shared trip through space and time, and I see that I must become an active participant in the daunting task of influencing the organic process of societal change in a direction which offers the best possibilities of survival of our world and our species.

None of us is alone in this whirling maelstrom of chaotic advancement. The unimaginably complex set of variables the problems of our future present seem insurmountable at times. But one fact remains above all others. We will all share the fate our future brings. We must shoulder our burdens and make the corrections to the path of our shared civilization and to our individual lives necessary to secure the blessings of a bountiful common future for life on earth.

In furtherance of that goal, to promote a sustainable common future, and to provide an outlet to my frustrations, fears, hopes and dreams, I will gather and share the flotsam of information on advancing sustainable technologies floating through the collective consciousness of the web as well as comment on local initiatives happening in and around my own community of Conway, Arkansas and the social and political currents which are shaping our shared outcomes.