My Bride and I watched the Clint Eastwood flick Firefox (1982) last weekend, where Clint steals a Soviet fighter controlled by brain waves. (The CIA, always bad at its task, convinced us that the Soviet economy was something to be feared and that the Soviets were capable of vast technological leaps. In reality the Soviets were terrified of Stars Wars, and, in effect, surrendered in the Cold War a few years after the film came out, because their never, never economy was hopelessly outclassed by the West.)
I was surprised at how well the four decades plus special effects held up. The Soviet dissidents were the true heroes of the movie, and the film still has an emotional grab. I recall when the film was originally released, people in the movie theater yelling, Think in Russian!, when Eastwood flying the Firefox was momentarily discombobulated. One of the first of the techno thrillers.
The author of the post above is The Feral Historian, who looks at popular culture, mostly science fiction of the past fifty years, on YouTube, and whose taste and frequently acerbic opinions resemble mine.
Nicola Tesla believed that brain waves could be photographed.
BIOLOGICAL COMPUTER
Francis X. Maier at The Catholic Thing
We haven’t had a war on our home soil in 160 years. We’re the wealthiest, most successful republic turned de facto empire in, well, history. We’re also the greatest toolmakers. The result is predictable: Optimism is baked into our national assumptions. It drives our faith in technology, a faith with astonishing achievements, a faith with now global adherents.
Later this year the Australian biotech company Cortical Labs will introduce the CL1 – the world’s first “body in a box” biological computer – for a mere $35,000 per unit:
CL1 is the tip of a new-wave technological iceberg. Brain-computer interface (BCI) research is now a robust and expanding field. And isn’t that good news? What could possibly be wrong with tools that might one day cure paralysis or mental illness? Maybe just this: Optimism confirmed by optimal results has a habit of eliding into hubris with very different and unpleasant consequences. We use our tools, but our tools also use us by rewiring not just our abilities, but also our appetites and imaginations.
Great book. I remember fictional pages of discussion about what to do about the development of a new soviet fighter that ended with:
“We steal it.”