The Future of Lying — Researchers Work on a “Truth Scanner”
The Washington Post has a great piece today from Joel Garreau about how new brain scanners may replace the polygraph in showing when you are lying. Evidently, the 10 ton “functional magnetic resonance imaging” machine goes well beyond the flawed polygraph stress test to actually map our brains when we are lying.
A few years ago, there was a book by James Halperin entitled The Truth Machine. Absolutely top-shelf futurist fiction, this novel explores human society once a fool-proof, 100% accurate truth machine can fit into eye glasses, giving you a real time indicator of whether people are lying. Obviously, everything from romances to used-car sales changes dramatically. Based on Halperin’s detailed exploration of possible scenarios, this kind of technology could throw society for a loop.
Halperin is such a mensch, he’s got the book’s manuscript for FREE download.
In fact, while you’re at it, download a copy of his other masterpiece, The First Immortal. That book explores in exquisite detail the ramifications of law extension. For example, what happens to the banking system when people live forever?
We’re quite a few years from this kind of technology, but likely on the way to such abilities, we’ll have many, many challenges to encounter.
-Garland
Labels: Information technology, society