by Terrence Aym

Created on: August 05, 2010   Last Updated: August 06, 2010

iPhone, iPod, iPad, and now...the iBrain?

While there are organizations out there that want to get under your skin—by implanting RFID devices the size of a grain of rice in the back of your hand—others plan on getting into your head.

Literally.

The brave new world of the iBrain

If computer chip giant Intel has its way, in the future most people who hear voices chattering away in their heads won't need to seek a psychiatrist, they'll just need to talk back. That's because the corporation envisions a brave new world where everyone on the planet has a phone chip implanted in their brains. The chip will also replace all hand held devices and even allow users to directly interact with whatever the Internet might morph into by 2020.

Yes, that's right. In less than 10 years you might be expected to join millions of other "augmented humans" with a shiny new iBrain.

A bio-electric witches' brew

As privacy experts cringe, advocates virtually wax poetic, ecstatically ticking off on their fingertips an array of benefits. And while it's true benefits exist, the downside of phones implanted in peoples' brains could thrust hapless humanity into a proverbial 21st Century witches' brew torn from the pages of Macbeth.

Hold that thought please, Tokyo calling

Some Japanese technocrats enthusiastically support the idea of every person in Japan becoming a human extension of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.

In Tokyo, Toyota executives point proudly to a wheelchair 100 percent controlled by pulsing brainwaves. On the other side of the world  in Utah techno geeks rub their hands with glee over the success of cyborg monkeys performing amazing feats with mechanized arms … and elsewhere clacking, rattling robots respond directly to human thought in laboratories just a few steps away from Dr. Frankenstein's study.

The Japanese are unperturbed and the Chinese and South Koreans are already considering the billions to be made manufacturing iBrain interfaces.

Meanwhile, back in America—land of the free—federal security experts employed by the DIA, NSA and DHS envision a US where every citizen will be tracked via the telecommunication chips embedded deep into living brain tissue. Automatic transponders will send out a data stream signature 24/7 to any government spy with a need to know where you are, why you might be there and what you're doing there...Adolf Hitler only dreamed of such power.

Could computer viruses infect the brain?

Some IT experts wonder aloud about

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