Mind Control

Why we don’t need machine-brain interfaces to control human beings and turn ourselves into drones

Image credit: 20th Century Fox

The only two characteristics that distinguish humans from other animals are not what many people imagine. Forget about using tools: plenty of other animals use tools too, and some species are more sophisticated tool-users than we are. For example, studies on New Caledonian Crows have demonstrated they can solve 21-step puzzles by shaping and using tools in a wide variety of ways. Personally I don’t know any human being who can solve a 21-step puzzle. Forget about language and intelligence: as we learn more about other species it’s becoming increasingly apparent that language and intelligence are far from uncommon, and that we humans are a great deal less intelligent than we’d like to believe.

So what are the two characteristics that really do stand us apart? The first is obvious: we are, to the best of our current knowledge, the only animal that fashions semi-indelible records of its musings. No other animal, as far as we know today, makes permanent records that can be accessed by later generations. Our entire civilization is predicated on the ability to record, store, and access vast quantities of information, so that a more-or-less continuous increase in total knowledge becomes possible. Yet we’ve only been doing this for a fraction…