Out there in the wonderful world of commercial science, the ability to do what mind control victims have been complaining of for nearly 20 years is coming into view.
On 8 April CNN reported that a Sony scientist has a patent, first granted in 2000, on an ultrasound device which in the words of CNN’s headline writer, ‘aims to beam sights, sounds into brain’. Among the patent’s claims are: ‘The pulsed ultrasonic signal alters the neural timing in the cortex…….No invasive surgery is needed to assist a person, such as a blind person, to view live and/or recorded images or hear sounds.’ (<www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.games/04/07/sony.brain.reut/index.html>)
Some of the ‘crazy mind-control victims’ also claim that their minds are being read. The science editor of The Observer, Robin McKie, reported on 20 March on ‘Scans that read your mind fuel ethical worries’ (<http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_ news/story/0,6903,1441799,00.html>).
‘Mind control’ is the most difficult subject I have touched on in these pages. It’s difficult because my lack of scientific knowledge means that I have to take far too much scientific reporting on trust; and because it involves me trying to decide who is and isn’t deluded. Sometimes it’s easy. In the last few days of preparing this issue for the printer I was contacted by someone who claimed that he was the victim of a vast conspiracy – led, apparently by MI5 – which involved, inter alia, TV newsreaders watching and commenting on his life while he watched the news. He had gone to extraordinary lengths, and spent a lot of money to try and substantiate his various claims about this ‘plot’. I asked him two questions:
- Why are you so important that the state has spent all these millions persecuting you?
- Why would TV newsreaders take part in such a conspiracy?
He simply ignored my questions.
In my view this person is clearly deluded.
But he was not the first person to tell me that newsreaders were commenting on his life. One other has done so; and a third, older person, told me that radio stations and novels included material taken from his life and clearly aimed at him. Assuming that the delusion adapts to the technology, if I keep this going long enough I will have people telling me that they are being spied on by their computers, Play Stations and Blackberries.
Meanwhile the president of the country whose armed forces seem to be doing most of this mind control research, is receiving messages from ‘God’. I don’t know that ‘ironic’ quite gets it.