What's On Your Mind? Your Computer Will Soon Be Able to Tell You
One of the greatest magicians in history, Harry Houdini, was well known for his death-defying stunts and mind-blowing escapes from sealed chambers. One of his most astounding tricks was reading a person’s mind. Houdini himself took great pains to inform audiences that all his feats were illusion. He would state plainly to the people in the audience that reading minds was impossible. Houdini was even on a committee organized by Scientific American that offered a substantial reward for anyone proving, conclusively, that they had psychic power. No one ever collected.
Mind-reading, or telepathy, has long been solely within the purview of science fiction and fantasy. Science and technology, however, seems poised to turn telepathy into scientific fact.
Work is under way at universities around the world where researchers have been able to use advanced sensors to read individual words, images, and thoughts in a subject’s brain. The technology is, by no means, perfected, but it has been postulated by some scientists at IBM that, within the next five years, we will be able to communicate with computers using our minds.