The head of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health,
Dr. Tom Insel, is leaving that post to go to work for Google’s Life Sciences
division. He will be tasked with investigating how technology can help diagnose
and treat mental health conditions.
That
doesn’t sound like a bad thing, does
it? It would seem a rather noble and needed pursuit, correct?
Google
proposes to accomplish this feat with ‘wearable’ technologies. This may involve
sensors, bio-metrics, and constant monitoring of everything one does. One’s recent shopping and web browsing
history will likely be used to help identify the first signs of mental illness. Advanced mobile
phones probably will be ‘observing’ our mental health, essentially reading our
minds, and then ‘fixing’ them as ‘necessary.’
No subjectivity here! Who provides the input,
markers and parameters that tell the ‘technology’ what behaviors constitute
‘mental illness?’ Will your wearable technology essentially say to itself, “He’s
accessing the ‘Drudge Report,’ I better turn him in!?” Or perhaps, “ Holy crap,
now he’s ordering a Barbara Streisand c.d.!
Preparing for the wireless lobotomy!”
We may become fully ‘robotized’ before robots do. That is scary.
‘Robotomy,’
anyone?
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