Retro Thoughts

1: Speech Excerpt: “No Regrets”

Excerpt of a speech given to a government advisory panel by early brain imaging subject Ezra Marsden.

I’ve been invited here today to tell you all about my own personal experience of brain and body imaging technology. Before I get into that, it’s worth defining what that technology really is, what it has done for the human race and what it might still be able to offer us in the future.

Simply put, brain and body imaging technology has allowed us to scan and preserve not just the physical structure of a human brain at a moment in time, but also its conscious content, the mind or character of that person on that day, as well as the precise state of their body. Once scanned and stored in this way, the brain image can be copied, booted and executed on limitless runs just as we execute computer programs.

Since the inception of this technology, the scientific community has been able to build on it to produce brain image container scenes, running multiple brain images in a simulated environment including scans of real-world objects. The benefits of this technology to humankind have become manifest over the past few years, but we have only scratched the surface of what is possible.

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I take pride in the words “I was imaged”, and pride in the fact that my own human experience has now been experienced far more than that of almost any other human being in history. We all get one chance to make our mark on the world, and I know for sure I’ve made mine.

3: Abstract of a Study in Journal of Applied Psychiatry, 2054

“Effectiveness of Brain Image Scenes for Rehabilitation of Recalcitrant Violent Offenders”

Common international practice for treatment of recalcitrant violent offenders involves a combined course of cognitive therapy and drug treatment during incarceration. To our knowledge, this is the first study of the effect of using brain and body image container scenes (both commonly abbreviated as BICS) as a form of extended therapy to treat violent offenders. We suggest that offenders able to use the BICS therapy to fully act out their violent fantasies, without causing harm to real-world victims, is associated with temporary reduction in real-world episodes of violence (EoV, as defined by the DSM-IX) over a 30 day period.

We found that creating the possibility of a tapered withdrawal from offenders' tendency to violent behaviours was associated with a post-treatment decrease in real-world episodes of violence over a 30 day period of 94% (95% CI 73 to 99). A single session of cathartic release therapy using the BICS instance was associated with a reduction in EoV over a 30 day period of 85% (95% CI 76 to 91). The effect on likelihood of violent behaviour on a given day peaked at 26-29 days post treatment. Comparable reductions in more severe cases of recalcitrant violent behaviour were not achieved, despite repeated courses of the treatment therapy using the same brain images and container scene.

Standard “off-the-shelf” brain images were used to create the BICS instance used for each course of cathartic release therapy. We speculate that using brain images of individuals known to the offender, and of greater emotional significance to them, might allow a stronger cathartic treatment effect to be achieved. With the introduction of the Personality Rights of Imaged Brains Act 2054, this would require permission of the image holder for commercial use if offered by a private medical provider, although personal use of images acquired by patients themselves would fall outside the remit of this law.

5: Section of Alex Patterson’s Autobiography

The Invention of Spatially and Temporally Remote Viewing

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The 21st century saw the invention of many influential technologies that led to the betterment of mankind. Much hyperbole has been written about my own meagre contribution to that number, and I’m grateful for the reader’s indulgence in letting me write my own account of it here.

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Whilst early speculation that wormhole technology might be used to transport physical mass between arbitrary points in the spacetime continuum has so far met disappointment, the ability to amplify a section of the electromagnetic spectrum in that way has nonetheless had significant implications for our scientific progress.

Firstly, it has enabled us to see the light of other places instantaneously and at ever-decreasing cost, enabling whole new industries of communication, monitoring and surveillance to flourish. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it has enabled us to see the light of other times. In other words, our technology has given us the power to reproduce electromagnetic waves both spatially and temporally. We can view anywhere and any-when, at least in the past.

As the reader most likely knows, this has already had profound implications for every society on our home planets. You can easily go and watch me write this paragraph “live”, to give a trivial example. I will never forget the moment I realised, as I brought the new technology to fruition, that countless wave-tourists from across time and space must have been watching me in that moment. I have since become one of them. The impact on the legal and political fields make for decidedly less benign examples, to say nothing of the myriad other cascading effects on our lives.

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I am aware that it did not take long before the technology my team and I brought into the world was subsequently combined with the invention of brain and body imaging (BBI). The BBI technology works by reading electromagnetic waves as signals about physical structure (not entirely dissimilar to the principle behind old-fashioned passive radar that has since been obsoleted). Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your moral stance, this means that it is possible to perform brain and body image scans through a spatial and temporal transfer. We can image the brain of any person in any place from any time.

6. Legal Discussion around Smith vs Wade, 2053

“Personality Rights of Imaged Brains, aka ‘The Celeb Sim-Sex Case’”

In summary, I would advise that an application be made on Ms Wade’s behalf to continue proceedings as an infringement of personality rights law on the grounds that the information Mr Smith was selling to clients for so called “sim session” purposes can not be regarded as public domain at the time at which he was selling it, regardless of the ubiquity of the brain and body image data in question.

Intercepting and decoding brain imaging data remotely may be relatively commonplace but nonetheless requires sophisticated hardware and software. Even if it is commonplace for members of the general public to trade brain and body images made of themselves, members of the general public do not typically mistakenly assume that personality rights law as commonly understood does not apply to likenesses of others acquired without their knowledge.

Mr Smith’s objection that consent for use of the images was acquired without duress cannot be considered valid, as this consent, whilst indeed apparently acquired without duress, was acquired from one of a multitude of attempted re-runs of the images in a so-called “ground hog day” strategy.

7. Classified Ad

“I will image anyone you want for $400”

I have decent quality remote wave and brain and body imaging hardware plus the software and knowledge to use it. Give me a name and time and location if it’s not someone famous and I’ll give you whatever brain and body scan of them you want. Price is $400 by anonymous cryptocoin. No haggling no questions asked by me or by you.