by ALEX HUTCHINSON
The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku (Doubleday, Pages 400, Price $33)
Miffed that the Canadian spy agency was snooping on your airport WiFi signal? That’s nothing. Using a technique called electrocorticography, researchers are now able to decode the electromagnetic signals in your brain with enough accuracy to recognize simple words like “hot” and “cold” more than 75 per cent of the time. Sure, it requires open-skull surgery to access these signals, but how long will it be before neuro-eavesdropping goes wireless?
Fortunately, there are ways of keeping your thoughts to yourself, as Michio Kaku explains in The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind. The key is a device called a Faraday cage, which blocks brain waves by dispersing the electric field around it. In practice, Kaku writes, this telepathy shield “would consist of thin metal foil placed around the brain.”
That’s right. Michio Kaku, the New York-based theoretical physicist who helped lay the groundwork for modern string theory, the multi-New York Times-bestselling author of (most recently) Physics of the Future, is suggesting that you may want to start wearing a tin-foil helmet.
The Globe and Mail for more