OPENING PANDORA’S BOX:

How technologies of communication

‘Psycho-Civilized Society’

KINGSLEY DENNIS

Sociology Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

Abstract

Increasingly there are indications that the uses of wireless technologies have

been developed to target an individual’s biological body, with specific focus

upon the neuronal functioning of the brain. In this paper I examine how some

of these uses have had detrimental effects, and what this implies for both

present and upcoming developments for particular wireless/sensor

technologies. I consider whether this is not shifting dangerously towards a

psycho-civilised society, where greater emphasis is placed upon social control

and pre-emptive strategies.

Introduction

The rate of technological innovation in some fields is developing exponentially

with new advances in wireless sensor networks, ubiquitous and pervasive

computing, motes, nodes, grids, and media platforms. Information flows are

increasing not only in their quantity and density, but also in their immersive

quality. The historical developments of information communication systems

can be said to have traced a similar path to how nation states have organised

their global power base and dominance. First, power over the land and

dominance in waging war on one’s neighbours through ground battle, the

domesticated horse and the infantry soldier. Second, domination of the seas

and the strongest Navy gave advantage to sea-faring Empires, such as

Portugal, Spain, and Britain. The end of naval dominance then gave rise to the

advent of the railroad and the dynamic change in transport technology, both

in routes and in speed. The transcontinental scope of the railroads finally gave

out to air power, winning the World Wars through dominance in the skies.

And now, finally, the ‘final frontier’ is space, for ‘the vast potential resource

base of outer space is presumably so enormous, effectively inexhaustible, that

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any state that can control it will ultimately dominate the earth’ (Dolman,

2001: 41).

Likewise, modern communication technologies have moved from the land

(the telegraph); to the sea (wireless radio; radar); back to land (cables; fibre

optics); and to the intermediate land/air stage (masts/antenna); to the outer

frontier of space (satellites); and finally now even beyond these frontiers

towards a solar system Internet (Turner, 2007). Whoever controls these

channels for communication can, in some degree, to be said to ‘dominate the

earth’. And the possible uses of wireless communications for the

dissemination, targeting, and receiving of clandestine ‘communications’ is an

active industry.

The aim of this paper is to examine some of the examples and instances where

the use of wireless technologies have been developed to target an individual’s

biological body, with specific focus upon the neuronal functioning of the

brain. I also show how some of these uses have had detrimental effects, and

what this implies for both present and upcoming developments in particular

wireless/sensor technologies. This paper shows that an upcoming area of

importance is neurotechnology, a discipline that places brain functioning and

knowledge of the human brain as primary. Technologies are now being

researched and trialled that seek to penetrate and, to a degree, intervene in

neural functioning. Whilst some have termed this positively as a coming

‘neural society’ (Lynch, 2004), I consider whether this is not shifting

dangerously towards a psycho-civilised society, where greater emphasis is

placed upon social control and pre-emptive strategies. I trace a timeline that

follows developments from a historical context to the present; and finally to

future scenarios and implications. It may be that the social pursuit of

increasingly connective and immersive technologies has the potential to open

up a Pandora’s box of problematics.

Opening Pandora’s Box

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The background to this narrative begins with the story of a true Pandora’s Box

the psychology division of the psychiatry research section of Walter Reed

Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). This project was set-up to specifically

research programs on the health effects of microwave exposure following the

‘Moscow Embassy’ incident. From 1953 to 1976, the Soviets directed

microwave radiation at the U.S. embassy in Moscow from the roof of an

adjacent building. Whilst this clandestine microwave targeting was allegedly

known for some time by US officials, the event was not made public until 1976

when the U.S. State Department finally accused the Soviet Union of

bombarding the U.S. embassy in Moscow with microwave radiation for illicit

purposes. It was initially reported as a harmless procedure for charging Soviet

spy-bugs: ‘Soviet antennas, which are beaming the waves in both to charge up

the batteries of their listening devices and to jam embassy-based U.S.

electronic monitoring of Russian communications’ (Time, 1976b; 1976a).

However, the State Department soon indicated that, in addition to

interference mechanisms, the microwave radiation could have serious adverse

effects on the health of the occupants of the embassy (O'Connor, 1993). This

was supported by Soviet data in which Soviet non-ionising electromagnetic

energy (NIEM) ‘research literature reported adverse health effects in

laboratory animals and in Soviet radar workers at levels well below the 10

mW/|cm2 U.S. ANSI safety recommendations’ (O'Connor, 1993: 35). Despite

this being below the US recommended levels the Soviet standards excluded

military personnel whilst the US did not, according to the National Council on

Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), 1986 (O'Connor, 1993).

Soviet studies in the area of electromagnetic microwave radiation reported

psychological symptoms in human subjects that included lethargy, lack of

concentration, headaches, depression, and impotence (O'Connor, 1993: 35).

O’Connor notes how the Soviet medical journals termed these collective

symptoms as neurasthenia (1993). Time magazine reported in March 1976

that the State Department launched

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a medical investigation of the thousands of U.S. diplomats and their

families who served in Moscow since the early 1960s. In the wake of

the microwave disclosures, former embassy employees and their

families have recalled suffering strange ailments during their tenure

in Moscow, ranging from eye tics and headaches to heavy menstrual

flows. Some point out that former Ambassadors to Moscow Charles

Bohlen and Llewellyn Thompson both died of cancer, within the

last two years one other Moscow diplomat died of cancer, and five

women who lived there have undergone cancer-related

mastectomies—although no medical authorities attribute these

deaths and illnesses to radiation. (Time, 1976a)

US officials and military, long before the public exposure, were aware and

concerned about the consequences of microwave bombardment of civilian and

military targets. In 1972 the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released an

internal report (later declassified through the Freedom Of Information Act

the Surgeon General Medical Intelligence Office titled ‘Controlled Offensive

Behaviour – USSR’ (initially released in July 1972). The report states that

This report summarizes the information available on Soviet

research on human vulnerability as it relates to incapacitating

individuals or small groups. The information contained in this

study is a review and evaluation of Soviet research in this field of

revolutionary methods of influencing human behavior and is

intended as an aid in the development of countermeasures for the

protection of US or allied personnel. Due to the nature of the Soviet

research in the area of reorientation or incapacitation of human

behavior, this report emphasises the individual as opposed to

groups. (DIA, 1972)

It is interesting to note that the Report authors believed the Soviet research to

be in the area of ‘reorientation’; suggesting that the US were worried over

concerns that the Soviets may be planning a mass zapping of US citizens with

the hope of ‘brainwashing’ them into a newly orientated ideological outlook.

The 174 page Report is extensive, with much material extended upon various

forms of beamed energies and wireless strategies. On the opening section on

Electromagnetic Energy the report concludes that

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Super-high frequency electromagnetic oscillations (SHF) may have

potential use as a technique for altering human behavior. Soviet

Union and other foreign literature sources contain over 500 studies

devoted to the biological effect of SHF. Lethal and non-lethal

aspects have been shown to exist. In certain non-lethal exposures,

definite behavioural changes have occurred. (DIA, 1972: 18)

During this time the US establishment was not naïve to the potential of

In the 1970s Jose Manuel Rodriguez Delgado was a controversial figure in

neuroscience; a professor of physiology at Yale University, he was an

in a cover story as the ‘impassioned prophet of a new ‘psychocivilized society’

whose members would influence and alter their own mental functions’

(Horgan, 2005: 67). Yet two decades earlier, in 1952, Delgado co-authored the

first peer-reviewed paper describing long term implantation of electrodes in

humans (Horgan, 2005). As an example of the achievement into wirelessneurological

devices Delgado’s most famous experiment took place in 1963 at

a bull-breeding ranch in Cordoba, Spain. Delgado implanted radio equipped

electrodes, which he termed ‘stimoceivers’, into the brains of several ‘fighting’

bulls and stood in a bullring with one bull at a time and attempted to control

the actions of the bull by pressing buttons on a handheld transmitter. In one

instance Delgado was able to stop a charging bull in its tracks only a few feet

front page story on the event, ‘calling it “the most spectacular demonstration

ever performed of the deliberate modification of animal behavior through

external control of the brain”’ (Horgan, 2005: 70). In 1969 Delgado described

wireless brain-behaviour modification and its implications in his book

Delgado’s research during this time was supported not only by academic

grants but also by the US military’s Office of Naval Research. This research is

now over forty years old, and much has happened in the intervening four

decades.

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Technologies that can wirelessly transmit information from and to the body is

an area of research that has attracted various interested parties post-World

War 2. Such energy-information distribution and targeting within the

electromagnetic spectrum can variously be used for medical, industrial,

military, and telecommunications purposes. I now turn to examine some of

the military-industrial research and uses of wireless technologies.

Beams, Firewalls & Brain Scanning: Inside the Military-Industrial

Complex

Researcher Igor Smirnov of the Russian Academy of Sciences is by all

accounts an odd person, referred to by a Newsweek article as ‘A Subliminal

Dr. Strangelove’ (Elliott and Barry, 1994). Smirnov was apparently contacted

by the FBI during the Davidian sect siege in Waco, Texas in 1993. Experts

from the FBI Counter-Terrorism Center met with Smirnov in Arlington,

Virginia to discuss ways of affecting the behaviour of Davidian sect leader

David Koresh. Smirnov’s plan was to send subliminal messages through the

phone lines during negotiations; and for targeting David Koresh the plan was

to use the voice of Charlton Heston to subliminally play God (Elliott and

Barry, 1994). Smirnov’s strategies whilst sounding eccentric are closely tied

with military research into behaviour modification via wireless transmissions.

Smirnov’s laboratory in Moscow is named the Institute of Psycho-Correction

and using electroencephalograph scanning (EEG) he measures brain waves

which he then computes to create a map of various human impulses-brain

waves correlation. This data can then be used for experimenting upon

affecting brain-body modification at-a-distance. Asked in a 2004 interview

whether it was possible to defeat terrorism Smirnov replied that

Only informational war is capable of defeating terrorism

completely. And we possess this weapon. Peoples’ actions can in

fact be controlled by unnoticed acoustic influence. Look-it’s easy.

All I have to do is record my voice, apply special coding, which

converts my voice to mere noise and afterwards, all we have to do is

record some music on top of that. The words are indistinguishable

to your conscious; however, your unconscious can hear them

clearly. If we were to play this music over and over again on the

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radio for instance, people will soon start developing paranoia. This

is the simplest weapon. (Pravda, 2004)

Smirnov’s capabilities were demonstrated to US observers as far back as 1991

when infra-sound – a very low frequency transmission – was shown to be able

to transmit acoustic messages via bone conduction (Thomas, 1998: 84).

Military strategist Timothy Thomas examined these implications in his paper

‘The Mind Has No Firewall’ in which he states that ‘We are on the threshold of

an era in which these data processors of the human body may be manipulated

or debilitated. Examples of unplanned attacks on the body's data-processing

capability are well-documented’ (Thomas, 1998: 84). He references a Russian

military article on the same subject which declared that ‘”humanity stands on

the brink of a psychotronic war” with the mind and body as the focus’

(Thomas, 1998: 84). The context here is that the human body is a complex

communication system that is constantly receiving signal inputs, both

external and internal. Thus,

The "data" the body receives from external sources--such as

electromagnetic, vortex, or acoustic energy waves--or creates

through its own electrical or chemical stimuli can be manipulated

or changed just as the data (information) in any hardware system

can be altered. (Thomas, 1998: 85)

Military thinking in this area is beginning to shift towards a systemic

viewpoint which considers the human as an open system rather than as a

closed, bounded system.

In this new systemic approach the human communicates with, and can be

communicated by, the environment through information flows and

communications media. By this understanding military thinking has begun to

openly declare that ‘one's physical environment, whether through

electromagnetic, gravitational, acoustic, or other effects, can cause a change in

the psycho-physiological condition of an organism’ (Thomas, 1998: 86).

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Simpson’s investigations into the sociological discipline of communication

research, which crystallised in the US in the early 1950s, shows that it was

financed and mentored by governmental psychological warfare programs:

Government psychological warfare programs helped shape mass

communication research into a distinct scholarly field, strongly

influencing the choice of leaders and determining which of the

competing scientific paradigms of communication would be funded,

elaborated, and encouraged to prosper. (Simpson, 1994: 3)

Dominance over the airwaves, and the capability to exert coercive control over

information communications is a vital area in military planning. Documented

and declassified evidence shows that what may have begun as a program in

standardized propaganda and psychological warfare has now developed into

research on wireless information targeting and ‘psychocivilized’ control

practices. To this effect the term ‘psycho-terrorism’ was coined by Anisimov

of the Moscow Anti-Psychotronic Center and Anisimov admits to testing such

devices as are said to ‘take away a part of the information which is stored in a

man's brain. It is sent to a computer, which reworks it to the level needed for

those who need to control the man, and the modified information is then

reinserted into the brain’ (Thomas, 1998: 87). In such cases there is concern

that the ‘mind has no firewall’ and may be vulnerable to accidental, unwanted

and/or rogue interventions. Thomas’s paper concludes by stating that ‘In

reality, the game is about protecting or affecting signals, waves, and impulses

that can influence the data-processing elements of systems, computers, or

people. We are potentially the biggest victims of information warfare, because

we have neglected to protect ourselves’ (Thomas, 1998: 89).

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) brief on this subject titled

‘Controlled Effects’ also noted the power to use the electromagnetic spectrum

for wirelessly interfering into human subjects’ thinking and behaviour. By this

stage the strategy had been dubbed ‘non-lethal weapons’, as explored more

fully in the work of non-lethal defence at Los Alamos by retired Army Colonel

John B. Alexander (Alexander, 1999). The AFRL report states that

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the panel investigated the potential for using electromagnetic and

other nonconventional force capabilities to achieve strategic,

tactical, lethal, and nonlethal force projection… For the Controlled

Personnel Effects capability, the S&T panel explored the potential

for targeting individuals with nonlethal force, from a militarily

useful range, to make selected adversaries think or act according

to our needs. (AFRL, 2004)

These theories and concerns to affect command and control at-a-distance

were echoing the conclusions from a much larger and significant military

report that was published and made available in 1996 titled ‘New World

Vistas’. ‘New World Vistas’ was a major undertaking by the US Air Force

Scientific Advisory Board to examine future developments in weapons, and

totalled 14 volumes of studies. The fifteenth ‘ancillary’ volume concluded by

putting forth some potential developments for a possible future man-machine

integration. In a section dealing with ‘Biological Process Control’ the Report

states that

One can envision the development of electromagnetic energy

sources, the output of which can be pulsed, shaped, and focused,

that can couple with the human body in a fashion that will allow

one to prevent voluntary muscular movements, control emotions

(and thus actions), produce sleep, transmit suggestions, interfere

with both short-term and long-term memory, produce an

experience set, and delete an experience set. (USAF, 1995)

In military-speak the term ‘experience set’ implies a person’s stored memories

and life experiences; thus suggesting that such a technology could delete and

then replace a person’s memories, or ‘experience set’. Research and

development along these lines have so far materialised a technology dubbed

The Active Denial System is a non-lethal, directed-energy weapon system

recently unveiled by the U.S. military and which directs, or pulses,

electromagnetic radiation at a frequency of 95 Gigahertz (GHz) towards the

target subjects. The radiated beam of millimetre-wave energy can travel over a

range of 500m and heats the water molecules in the epidermis skin up to 54C

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(130F) (BBC, 2007). The result can be an intensely painful burning sensation.

Such a system was designed for such uses as crowd control. A fully

operational and mounted system was demonstrated to journalists by US

Reuters correspondent who volunteered to be shot with the beam during the

demonstration described it as ‘similar to a blast from a very hot oven - too

painful to bear without diving for cover’ (BBC, 2007). The diagram below

http://www.specialsol.com/electr5.gif

These technologies show uses of wireless-to-body communication and

directed energy weapons for possible military attack or defence purposes.

Another area for research and development is in both military and industrial

uses for operator enhancement.

Real-time brain scanning of pilots and similar operators under stress is an

increasingly active area for research involving military and industrial

partnerships. Since the early 1990s research has been made into detecting and

interpreting brain and body signals, especially brainwaves, for computerized

monitoring of pilots. This information can be used to measure pilot fatigue

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and to compensate for this with increased automation of the airplane in order

to avoid pilot-error. Initially this was conducted by measuring the pilot's brain

waves through unobtrusive sponge sensors in the flight helmet:

By measuring the amplitude of the brain waves generated, fatigue

of the pilot can be recognized. By increasing the brightness of the

instrumental panel lights, the amplitude of the brain waves can be

returned to their normal height, thus compensating for fatigue. To

get the "evoked response" from the pilot's brain, the instrument

panel lights could be made to flash so fast that the pilot would not

be aware of the flashes. (Welsh, 1998: 37)

Researchers have said that the brain can ‘register’ up to 145 flickers per

second, which can then be followed-up by beaming a near infrared light into

the subject's eye, causing a spot of light to be reflected off the cornea in order

to track eye movement and measure the degree of pilot concentration. This

type of research, which is still ongoing, has been referred to by at least one

monitoring of people in situations where fatigue could be fatal now involves

real-time analysis and observation of motorists. A technology now being

considered is one called ‘Sensation’.

This technology is non-intrusive and includes a

small camera that monitors a driver's eye

movements, looking out for repeated blinking,

which can be evidence of tiredness. To

compliment this the driver's seat is also lined

with a material which monitors changes in body

temperature. The steering wheel too checks for

handling pressure. Finally, other sensors, if

needed, can be fitted to the finger and ear to

send out measurements of pressure to indicate

fatigue and levels of concentration. The driver is now wirelessly monitored,

both by camera and wireless sensors, to create a more extensive immersive

driving experience (Millward, 2006).

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This research and these innovations indicate that a shift is occurring in how

the human is enmeshed into an increasingly information saturated

environment. These developments recognise that the human body is itself

becoming the most capable data-processing subject. The rest of this paper

explores how these trends to envelop the body-brain into an environment of

information flows are being developed into social and commercial

applications.

Emotional Gaming & Dangerous Intentions: Inside the Social-Civil

Sphere

The use of EEG brain scanning has now moved into the gaming industry with

up-to-date developments in sensory gaming. Recently Emotiv publicly

released information on their upcoming ‘Project Epoc’, a developmental

technology that interprets electrical signals emitted by the brain and converts

them into actions on a computer. In this way the user/gamer is able to direct

actions via their thoughts in the online environment. Below are pictures of

The company webpage claims that they provide the ultimate humancomputer

interface and that they are pioneers in brain computer interface

(accessed 15/01/08)

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Emotiv has created the first brain computer interface technology

that can detect and process both human conscious thoughts and

non-conscious emotions. The technology, which comprises a

headset and a suite of applications, allows computers to

differentiate between particular thoughts such as lifting an object or

rotating it; detect and mimic a user’s expressions, such as a smile or

In the same press release the company foresees in the future that ‘Emotiv’s

technology has the potential to be applied to numerous industries, including

interactive television, accessibility design, market research, medicine, and

gone even further than Emotiv and reduced ‘the brainwave pickup to the

minimum specification imaginable—a single electrode. Existing versions of

this electrode are small enough to fit into a mobile phone and…they will soon

be shrunk to the size of a thumbnail, enabling people to wear them without

noticing (Economist, 2007). The company website claims its ‘bio sensor and

signal processing system for the consumer market’ will unlock ‘worlds of new

applications such as consumer electronics, health, wellness, education and

Clearly there is a potential commercial market envisioned here for wirelessbrain

technology that goes beyond the sphere of gaming. Somewhat on the

extreme to this, wireless acoustic transmissions have now been developed to

‘stop’ people from over-gaming; in other words, as a treatment for gaming

addiction. In highly technologised Asian countries such as South Korea

teenagers are spending an unhealthy amount of time at their computers in

gaming environments. There have even been instances where gamers have

died after extensively long sessions in front of a computer without a break,

South Korean company Xtive, established in 2005, spent a year of research to

develop a system of acoustic sound waves that act as subliminal transmissions

during the gaming experience:

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We incorporated messages into an acoustic sound wave telling

gamers to stop playing. The messages are told 10,000 to 20,000

times per second…Game users can’t recognize the sounds. But

their subconscious is aware of them and the chances are high they

will quit playing…Game companies can install a system, which

delivers the inaudible sounds after it recognizes a young user has

kept playing after a preset period of time. (Tae-gyu, 2007)

This emphasises that research into techno-information flows are increasingly

being developed that wirelessly interact with a person as a biological

construct, utilising the already present bio-neural functioning. And this is a

trend that is attracting more corporate players wishing to enter the field.

Gaming giant Sony Corporation has submitted and been granted a patent on a

device for transmitting sensory data directly into the human brain. Sony’s

patent describes the device as firing ‘pulses of ultrasound at the head to

modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the brain, creating "sensory

experiences" ranging from moving images to tastes and sounds’ (Hogan and

Fox, 2005). This is based upon a technique known as transcranial magnetic

stimulation that activates the nerves by using rapidly changing magnetic

fields to induce currents in brain tissue. The patent also claims that this

technology could give blind or deaf people the chance to see or hear. Niels

Birbaumer, a neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who

has himself developed similar devices, examined the Sony patent and

commented that ‘I looked at it and found it plausible’ (Hogan and Fox, 2005).

Since Sony’s initial patent application in 2000 (granted in March 2003), a

series of further patents have been applied for. However, this line of research

is not totally new.

For several years there has been research conducted into decoding thoughts

from the brain for sending signals to an external device such as manipulating

cursors on a screen, which has been developed for disabled people, as in the

case of Matthew Nagle (Pollack, 2006). In recent years several other

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companies have emerged claiming to offer brain-computer wireless

interaction for either gaming purposes or for various health impairment

benefits. One example is S.M.A.R.T. BrainGames, a company based in

California that offers EEG caps designed to treat people with attention deficit

and hyperactivity disorder. The company claims to offer superior

is increasingly shifting towards becoming a biologically-enhanced dataprocessor

for wireless reception and transmission. Computer software giant

Microsoft is aware of this and already ahead of the game.

In 2004 Microsoft was awarded US Patent 6,754,472, titled ‘Method and

patent Microsoft is granted exclusive rights to a technology that uses the

electrical capacity of the human body to act as a computer network (Adam,

2004). Microsoft envisages ‘using the human skin's conductive properties to

link a host of electronic devices around the body, from pagers and personal

data assistants (PDA) to mobile phones and microphones, although the

company is uncharacteristically coy about exactly what it may have in mind’

(Adam, 2004). This supports what Bill Gates himself has said about the

computer finally disappearing into the environment and the world around us

(Gibson, 2005). This may be the ultimate wireless network, using the

complete skin of the body, from fingers to toes, receiving and transmitting

flows of information. The patent also proposes that an area of skin could even

act as a keypad making a person capable of typing by tapping on their arm

(Adam, 2004).

This is a powerful example of how technologies and technological thinking is

shifting away from external hardware devices towards using the natural bioproperties

of the human body for integration into a global informational

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6754472&id=30YSAAAAEBAJ&dq=6,754,472

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environment. As way of some examples, here are just two from many of the

patents filed that claim to develop wireless transmission technologies: patents

4,395,600 and 5,507,291. Patent No 4,395,600 is titled ‘Auditory subliminal

message system and method’ and is geared towards subliminal messaging to

influence consumer shoppers:

Ambient audio signals from the customer shopping area within a

store are sensed and fed to a signal processing circuit that

produces a control signal which varies with variations in the

amplitude of the sensed audio signals. A control circuit adjusts the

amplitude of an auditory subliminal anti-shoplifting message to

increase with increasing amplitudes of sensed audio signals and

decrease with decreasing amplitudes of sensed audio signals. This

amplitude controlled subliminal message may be mixed with

In a similar manner for affecting an individual’s mental state is patent No

5,507,291 – ‘Method and an associated apparatus for remotely determining

information as to person's emotional state’ – which comes very close to what

has been discussed on military uses of information-warfare:

In a method for remotely determining information relating to a

person's emotional state, a waveform energy having a

predetermined frequency and a predetermined intensity is

generated and wirelessly transmitted towards a remotely located

subject. Waveform energy emitted from the subject is detected and

automatically analyzed to derive information relating to the

In this scenario information flows are two-way with the body-brain emitting

as well as receiving. Yet with the human body-brain becoming a site for data

transfer and reception, there are concerns that it is increasingly becoming a

target for various corporate interests. And not only corporate interests are

involved in these developments, however, for there are also recent innovative

technologies in this area that offer serious implications for social privacy and

liberty at a state level.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT4395600&id=V_ItAAAAEBAJ&dq=4,395,600

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT5507291&id=940lAAAAEBAJ&dq=5,507,291

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At first the idea sounds like nothing more than science-fiction. Indeed, it even

appeared as a central feature in the film ‘Minority Report’. This is the notion

of pre-cognition: to be able to know a person’s actions before those actions are

committed. Yet now a team of neuroscientists have developed a technique

that can scan a brain and learn from the patterns of neuronal activity what a

person is thinking or intending to do. This research is the culmination of

recent studies where brain imaging has been used to identify particular brain

patterns pertaining to such behaviour as violence, lying, and racial prejudice

(Sample, 2007). To achieve this the team ‘used high-resolution brain scans to

identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts,

revealing what a person planned to do in the near future’ (Sample, 2007).

This is the first acknowledged instance of having the technical capacity to

of actual hard physical evidence of the crime. According to Prof Haynes: ‘We

see the danger that this might become compulsory one day, but we have to be

aware that if we prohibit it, we are also denying people who aren't going to

commit any crime the possibility of proving their innocence’ (Sample, 2007).

Since this technology is so new there are no current ethical or moral debates

on this issue and the implications for its civil use are worrying. If developed

these ‘techniques may eventually have wide-ranging implications for

everything from criminal interrogations to airline security checks. And that

alarms some ethicists who fear the technology could one day be abused by

authorities, marketers or employers’ (Cheng, 2007).

A hypothetical situation in the future might place these scanning devices

within regular x-ray scanning machines at airports. On passing through to the

passenger lounge all travellers will be scanned not only for potentially

not had a ‘dangerous intention’? Or rather, to quote a more familiar phrase:

this manner all travellers will have to safeguard their thoughts at all times;

who is to know whether such scanning devices are embedded into the walls of

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the airport lounge and corridors? Or in the toilets; on board the airplane? This

uncertain and somewhat dystopian scenario is one that could shift

technologised states into psycho-civilised societies where thoughts and

intentions become part of terrorist discourse. This could be seen as an

extreme case of convergence between the social compromises required to

facilitate efficient physical-digital infrastructures and the need for securitised

mobilities (Wood and Graham, 2006). It also resembles the extremity of

constructing an all-inclusive technological web of complex information flows

that bypasses traditional forms of interface.

This sees a shift away from earlier prototypes of the hardware-heavy cyborg,

engaging with their informational environments both in terms of security and

surveillance. In some ways these developments have contributed to a rise in

(In)Securities, Self-Sensoring & Sousveillance: Inside the Social

Panopticon

Fears over security and safety have reached new levels in the opening decade

of the twenty-first century. It is, in all respects, a post-millennium state of

insecurity. The older and more familiar paradigms of warfare and security

were based upon binaries (e.g. Democracy vs. Communism; friend vs. foe). To

some degree this binary distinction is still maintained and played out in media

and cultural discourse as Freedom vs. Anti-Freedom, or West vs. Islam. Yet

upon deeper scrutiny this manifests as an asymmetrical arrangement:

order/authority vs. guerrilla non-compliance. A terror suspect can therefore

no longer be easily identified as ‘the enemy’ which requires that all civilians be

categorised in a state of ‘potential terrorist’. This is especially so since the

notion of ‘home-grown terrorist’ is playing out the role of insurgency and

resistance from within. This subtle shift in categorisation has seen a parallel

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move in the increase of the militarization of the civil sphere. By this I argue

that civil space is increasingly becoming a ‘censor/sensored zone’ where

security issues – surveillance, tracking, identification – are played out.

This zone, which mobile bodies pass through and negotiate, is characterised

by a pervasive field of information, code, and signifiers that increasingly

constructs the ‘social’. Such a coded environment has the potential to be

extremely intrusive and goes beyond the normal ken of so-called civil

liberties. Under the sway of a post September 11 scenario and amid an

orchestrated ‘war on terror’ many of these intrusive technologies are in rapid

development, so much so that the UK Government’s Information

Commissioner himself states that we live in a surveillance society

surveillance involve step changes that are taking place gradually in many

Developments in sensor technologies and ubiquitous computing often focus

on the interfaces between person and environment such that interconnectivity

is likely to become more pervasive, intrusive, and ‘everywhere’. In a seminal

essay from 1996 computer engineers John Seely Brown and Mark Weiser

coined the term ‘ubiquitous computing’ and envisioned the ‘social impact of

imbedded computers may be analogous to . . . electricity, which surges

invisibly through the walls of every home, office, and car’ (Brown and Weiser,

1996). True to form, within a decade from this pronouncement computing

interfaces developed from fixed locations of access to increased wireless

connectivity. And it is predicted to become ever more ubiquitous in a manner

that will dissolve connectivity into embedded environments (Greenfield,

05/11/06)

http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/index.htm (accessed 05/11/07)

more than other industrialised Western states.

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20

2006). Greenfield considers this to be, in one form or another, an

inevitability, and refers to this ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) paradigm as

‘everyware’: ‘Everyware is information processing embedded in the objects

and surfaces of everyday life...the extension of information-sensing, -

processing, and -networking capabilities to entire classes of things we've

never before thought of as “technology”’ (Greenfield 2006: 18). This in turn is

likely to trigger the ‘always-on’ surveillance of people in both public life and in

private affairs. This inevitably blurs the boundaries between what is external

and what is internal, and leads to forms of surveillance that turn inwards and

Sousveillance was coined by Mann (1998) who describes it as form of

‘reflectionism’ or as a ‘watchful vigilance from underneath’, which is a form of

inverse surveillance. Yet it more than inverses the notion; it embellishes it

with a self-reflective responsibility. For Mann, reflectionism ‘holds up the

mirror and asks the question: “Do you like what you see?”’ (Mann, Nolan and

Wellman, 2003). Also, in this form, it requires that surveillance is enacted as a

form of self-control, as self-maintenance. It is the discipline of being inwardly

secure; firstly vigilant towards the self; secondly towards other people/selves.

This form of discipline seems to suggest that there is little room for negligence

when watchfulness is the order of the day. Yet it also prompts the ‘user’ of

sousveillance to be active and participate in the surrounding environment.

Sousveillance, whilst it can encourage social responsibility, also suggests the

need for the person to be guarded against unwanted intrusions and possible

violations.

Mann went on to transmit, in the mid 90s, his daily life experiences for others

to experience and interact with. This created opportunities for establishing a

sousveillance network between Mann and his ‘readers’, or rather social

network. This participatory/social panopticon into human-environment

interactions was a forerunner to how ‘wearable computing’ might one day

emerge as a form of modern ‘intelligent image processing’ (Mann, 2002).

Mann’s performance constructs a lived experience where the observation,

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recording, and dissemination of civic events have shifted towards a social

panopticon, infiltrating daily physical encounters. It is a communal

watchfulness of civil responsibility merged with a technical mandate for

collective commentary, social analysis, and security of the self. It is also an

enactment of performance ethnography, at the same time playful with notions

of socialisation and breaching norms (Mann, Nolan and Wellman, 2003).

However, the question this raises, I argue, is whether social domains might

not be in danger of becoming over-sensory realms, and what may emerge as

the most convenient and/or efficient strategy for coping with this. Stross’s

essay ‘The Panopticon Singularity’ (2002) considers this trend in a dystopian

fashion as ‘the emergence of a situation in which human behaviour is

deterministically governed by processes outside human control’. Stross

argues, reminiscent of Foucault, that while the effectiveness of societal

surveillance is dependent on the number of people involved ‘systems of

mechanised surveillance may well increase in efficiency as a power function of

the number of deployed monitoring points’ (Stross, 2002). In other words, as

more people join the social panopticon, or sousveillant society, this will have a

knock-on effect that encourages more people to join the securitisation of the

self, rather than being left vulnerable and un-sensored.

There is no denying that such panopticon devices are proliferating – they are

carried around with us, increasingly as our own willing appendages. The

debates at present are largely centred on surveillance, as state practices of

pervasive and ubiquitous top-down monitoring of civil space, rather than

forms of self-monitoring, as in sousveillance. Perhaps the next step will be

further towards practices of immersive surveillance and control, as indicated

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The current surge in research and development of wireless sensor networks is

likely to have a significant future impact upon not only how the human body

is configured in terms of medical applications but, perhaps more importantly,

how the human is cognitively-configured in terms of the information-rich

environment. One of the scenarios of ubiquitous, pervasive computing is to

embed the environment with non-invasive informational systems that merge

physical-digital infrastructures. Already much of our atmosphere is saturated

with informational flows in various spectrum bandwidths – we are constantly

walking through TV programs, mobile phone conversations, and even military

broadcasts. Yet we are not decoding these transmissions. The transformation

that these various scenarios in this paper suggest is that the human body is

becoming re-configured – or re-wired – into a biological antenna. Not only

will this greatly facilitate our access onto the Net but will also re-form the

human presence, or identity, into a coded wavelength. A wavelength that is

more readily readable to various technologies. This may seem far-fetched yet

such a future may not be a far leap away.

Conclusion : The Future A Quantum Leap Too Far?

Socio-technical evolutionary trends predict a future that is wholly immersed

in and conversant with an integral informational-digitised environment.

Informational flows are envisioned to go beyond the bits and bytes of present

computing into the qubits (quantum bits) and subatomic circuitry of quantum

computing (Schwartz, Taylor and Koselka, 2006). Researchers into quantum

computing are working with subatomic spins for exponential and staggering

computational capacity. A possible future may look a little like this:

Inside the hatband is Sharon's communication center and

intelligent assistant, which has scanned and sorted the 500,000 emails

she received overnight. By the time she reaches the car, it has

beamed the 10 most urgent ones and her travel schedule to her

visual cortex. The text scrolls down in the bottom of her field of

vision…At the airport there is no ticket check-in or security line.

Sharon simply walks through the revolving door, which scans her

for dangerous items, picks up her identity, confirms her

reservation, and delivers her gate number, all in the space of a

second. (Schwartz, Taylor and Koselka, 2006)

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23

Perhaps the most common prediction prevalent amongst computer engineers

is that computers – pervasive and non-perceptible – will be seeded and woven

throughout the environment. They will be painted onto walls, on furniture

and objects, inside the body, ‘communicating with one another constantly and

requiring no more power than that which they can glean from radio

frequencies in the air’ (Schwartz, Taylor and Koselka, 2006). Quantum

researcher and physicist Stuart Wolf anticipates that the next two decades will

usher in a type of communications he calls ‘network-enabled telepathy’.

Despite the fanciful name the method basically involves people’s wearable

devices (such as a ‘quantum headband’) sharing identity and downloaded

information with others in the person’s social network; and all driven by the

power of thought alone. However, as Wolf points out, ‘it will probably take a

new generation raised to think of quantum headbands as normal for its

potential to be truly realized’ (Schwartz, Taylor and Koselka, 2006). Yet Wolf

isn’t alone in his thinking.

Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson has speculated upon the possibility of

technology of observing neural processes inside a brain by means of locally

deployed radio transmitters (Dyson, 1997). For this to be feasible, speculates

Dyson, requires a technology to allow for the building and deployment of

small transmitters inside a living brain similar to integrated-circuit

technology on a silicon chip:

We know that high-frequency electromagnetic signals can be

propagated through brain tissue for distances of the order of

centimeters. We know that microscopic generators and receivers

of electromagnetic radiation are possible. We know that modern

digital data-handling technology is capable of recording and

analyzing the signals emerging from millions of tiny transmitters

simultaneaously. All that is lacking in order to transform these

possibilities into an effective observational tool is the neurological

equivalent of integrated-circuit technology. (Dyson, 1997: 133-4)

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Given these speculations, and what has been discussed in this paper, it is

likely that the major technology for the future is neurotechnology. The

information age that emerged out of post-war technologies, and which has

guided most of the technologies of the early twenty-first century, has made it

possible to collect, utilize, and transfer information/data at unparalleled

speeds. Communication, information, and data have been flowing at

exponential rates. However, they are yet to merge into a systemic

environment.

Neurotechnologies are set to change this with the rise of ‘nanobiochips’ and

brain-imaging and scanning technologies that will eventually lower the cost of

neurological techniques and analysis as well as making the procedures

efficient and profitable. Neurotechnologies, combined with wireless sensors,

may possibly usher in a communications revolution greater than that caused

by the arrival of the transistor and the microchip. Lynch, executive director of

the Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO), writes that ‘When data

from advanced biochips and brain imaging are combined they will accelerate

the development of neurotechnology, the set of tools that can influence the

human central nervous system, especially the brain (Lynch, 2004). Although

neurotechnologies are likely to be put to therapeutic and medical uses, such as

for improving emotional stability and mental clarity, they also open

opportunities for intrusive strategies of control and manipulation.

Part of this paper has been focused on the dangers of an increasingly wireless

world. These dangers may include the potential for invasive technologies,

based upon transmitted/received signals and wavelengths, to shift social

order towards a psycho-civilized society. By psycho-civilised I mean a society

that manages and controls social behaviour predominantly through nonobvious

methods of psychological manipulations, yet at a level far beyond that

of the ‘normalised’ social manipulations of propaganda and social institutions.

What I refer to are the technologised methods of psychological interference

and privacy intrusions in the manner of creating a docile and constrained

society. And here this brings us back to the problematics involved in opening

a Pandora’s Box.

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25

In this paper I have asked whether innovations in wireless and neurotechnologies

are not in danger of shifting human behaviour towards a psychocivilised

society, where greater emphasis is placed upon forms of social

control and pre-emptive strategies. What are the moral and ethical

implications of using wireless scanning surveillance technologies for

evaluating pre-emptive behaviour based on thoughts and intentions alone? Is

this not a dangerous path towards psycho-terrorising the social public? As

Thomas (1998) reminds us, the mind has no firewall, and is thus vulnerable to

viruses, Trojan horses, and spam. It is also vulnerable to hackers, cyberterrorists,

and state surveillance. Whilst this may sound a little too far-out,

they are reasonable questions to ask if technologies are racing ahead of us in

order to better get into our heads.

Becoming wireless also means becoming increasingly immersed within an

information-saturated environment. From the evidence of present trends and

developments it seems likely that a greater systemic interconnectedness and

interdependence is being formed between human-object-environment

facilitated through and by information flows. This may herald the coming of a

‘wonderful wireless world’, yet it may also signal unforeseen dangers in

protection, privacy, and security of the human biological body within these

new relationships. It is the suggestion of this paper that such issues and

concerns need to become more public, visible, and open; the very opposite of

these technologies.

About the Author

(CeMoRe) based at the Sociology Dept. at Lancaster University, UK. His

doctoral work focused on complexity theory and information communication

technologies. Post-doctoral research now involves examining physical-digital

convergences and how these might impact upon social processes. He is

concerned with the digital rendition of identity and the implications of

surveillance technologies.

Email: Kingsley [at] kingsleydennis [dot] co [dot] uk

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26

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