The Battle for Your Brain
Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A new dawn of brain tracking and hacking is coming. Will you be prepared for what comes next?
Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.
Neuroscience has already made all of this possible today, and neurotechnology will soon become the “universal controller” for all of our interactions with technology. This can benefit humanity immensely, but without safeguards, it can seriously threaten our fundamental human rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination.
From one of the world’s foremost experts on the ethics of neuroscience, The Battle for Your Brain offers a path forward to navigate the complex legal and ethical dilemmas that will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Farahany (The Impact of Behavioral Sciences on Criminal Law), a law and philosophy professor at Duke University, delivers a levelheaded examination of neurotechnology, a "catchall term for gadgets that connect human brains to computers" or process the data transmitted between the two. Farahany contends that these devices, which range from Fitbits to neural chips, offer reason for hope and caution. She notes that technological innovations show promise for extending the human lifespan, restoring sight to blind people, and even communicating telepathically (one experiment successfully used a "brain–computer interface" to route visual information from two participants to a third in a different room). However, such technology presents ethical risks, she cautions, pointing out a school in China that required some students to wear EEG headsets to monitor their engagement and warning that corporate studies on suggestibility during sleep indicate that sleep tracking devices constitute an invasive new frontier for advertising. She advocates for establishing a right to "cognitive liberty—the right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences." The author's evenhanded approach is a refreshing reprieve from the dystopian pessimism that often accompanies discussions of these technologies, and the eye-popping examples show that the future may be closer than many assume. Readers will be enthralled.
