The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology
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Description
Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, thought crimes are punishable by law, and your own feelings can be used against you. Where perfumers create customised fragrances to perfectly suit your emotions, and anyone can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions. Neuroscience has already made all of this possible, and neurotechnology will soon become the universal controller for our interactions with technology.
This can benefit humanity immensely, but without safeguards, it can severely threaten our fundamental rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination. Companies, governments, and militaries are all in: There have never been more ways to hack and track our brains. But access is just the beginning. Our brains can be changed with performance-boosting drugs, electrical stimulation, and surgical interventions. Soon neuro-monitoring and even cognitive warfare will be commonplace – the brain is the next battleground for humanity.
The Battle for Your Brain, by Nita A. Farahany, dives deeply into the promises and perils of the coming dawn of brain access and alteration. Written by one of the world’s foremost experts on the ethics of neuroscience, this highly original book offers a path forward to navigate the complex dilemmas that will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves.
Nita A. Farahany is Robinson O. Everett Professor of Law & Philosophy and Director of the Duke Science & Society at Duke University. She also offers consulting services to start-up companies and established corporate and government entities in neuroethics, bioethics, and tech ethics, and serves on ethics advisory boards for government, non-profit, and corporate entities, including current roles on the National Advisory Council for NINDS, Ethics Advisory Boards for Illumina, Inc. and Blackrock Neurotech, Scientific Advisory Board for Helix, Inc., and as a private consultant to corporate clients on ethical design and implementation of neurotechnology, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical products.
Additionally, she is Reporter and Commissioner for the Uniform Laws Commission, an Elected Member of the American Law Institute, past President of the International Neuroethics Society, Member of the National Academies Forum on Neuroscience & Nervous System Disorders, and Global Futures Council on Risk at the World Economic Forum.