COMING SOON TO A POLITICIAN OR MARKETER NEAR YOU

COMING SOON TO A POLITICIAN OR MARKETER NEAR YOU

I have only seen hypnotism acts on television and mind-control devices in spy movies, but those wacky Japanese seem to be working toward making the world a more... controlled... place.

NTT, Japan's telecommunications giant, has developed a device that can control humans by shooting electricity into the human ear. Right now we're not talking about post-hypnotic suggestions to murder the president, but the researchers have been able to make a subject wearing the test helmet walk in a particular pattern.

The cover story is that this will make videogaming more fun, but already some are considering military applications, and police departments are thinking it would be a useful tool in helping to control a bad guy.

But, as with all technology, with the good comes the bad. Sure, you may be able to keep a hostage-taker off-balance long enough to capture him and free hostages. But if this technology works, wouldn't it be handy at a supermarket, a department store, a mall, or a casino? Apparently, says the reporter in the article I linked above, the experience is not unpleasant and you don't feel as if you're unhappy. So you wind up in front of the expensive wines instead of the $2 per liter stuff. How different is this from Muzak, which was programmed to elicit specific human responses? Or aroma?

And then... could people beam this electricity at you from a distance, making you into their remote puppet? It might be fun at a sporting event... folks in the stands without theirs might wonder why the running back turned and ran the wrong way with the football.

Could you work this more than ninety feet from a polling place?

Yes, guns don't kill people, people kill people. But goodness gracious, we are just asking for it with some of the things we're trying to figure out, aren't we?