“It’s dangerous when people are willing to give up their privacy”

Noam Chomsky

It’s a very promising development: super-effective, clean and painless. It will allow us to treat and cure injuries and diseases that we could never reach before. It will make the blind to see and the lame to walk. And it ought to scare the hell out of you. Especially if you are a gambler or bettor. Still more if you are one of the suppliers of goods and services to the industry.

Pioneering entrepreneur Elon Musk has unveiled his latest futuristic concept: the workable wired brain. Using pigs as experimental subjects, Musk’s Neuralink laboratory has implanted microchips in three of them. The purpose is to map and display which neurons, which part of the subject brain, is being stimulated by certain activities, such as smelling for food. The eventual aim, says Neuralink, is to allow electronic monitoring of the human brain. Long-term, this may enable direct intervention in the brain tissue to help alleviate the effects of neural disorders. Alzheimer’s, traumatic brain damage, maybe even substance addiction are possible candidates. Also it will allow surveillance of someone’s particular health, perhaps advance warning of strokes or a heart attack. Further yet, it may enable individuals to control and interact with computer software directly via brain impulses.