Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Luke's Binoculars

An interesting future weapon:
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has tapped Northrop Grummanto develop binoculars that will tap the subconscious mind. The Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System program, informally called "Luke’s Binoculars," combines advanced optics with electro-encephalogram electrodes that can, DARPA believes, be used to alert the wearer to a threat before the conscious mind has processed the information. . . .
The idea is that your brain recognizes some images as threatening at a subconscious level. This generates identifiable brain wave patterns. The binoculars, the theory goes, will be more sensitive to threats than the conscious brain, especially the conscious brain of a relatively inexperienced soldier. It will then call the soldier's attention (red highlighting?) to the threat his own brain has perceived.

Along the same lines, experiments have recently confirmed that experienced, highly trained soldiers are more sensitive to risk than other people, presumably at least in part because they are more sensitive to those subconscious threat detectors.

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