PSYCHOKINESIS 97
come portable, perhaps even wearable on one's clothes. And the
clumsy wires may be dispensed with if the chip can be made wireless,
so the implant can seamlessly communicate to the outside world.
It is only a matter of time before other parts of the brain can be activated in this way. Scientists have already mapped out the surface of
the top of the brain. (If one graphically draws illustrations of our
hands, legs, head, and back onto the top of our head, representing
where these neurons are connected in general, we find something
called the "homunculus," or little man. The image of our body parts,
written over our brain, resembles a distorted man, with elongated fingers, face, and tongue, and shrunken trunk and back.)
It should be possible to place silicon chips at different parts of the
surface of the brain so that different organs and appendages can be activated by the power of pure thought. In this fashion, any physical activity that can be performed by the human body can be duplicated via
this method. In the future one could imagine a paralyzed person living
in a special psychokinetically designed home, able to control the airconditioning, TV, and all the electrical appliances by the power of
sheer thought.
In time one could envision a person's body encased in a special
"exoskeleton," allowing a paralyzed person total freedom of mobility.
Such an exoskeleton could, in principle, even give someone powers beyond those of a normal person, making him into a bionic being who
can control the enormous mechanical power of his superlimbs by
thought alone.
So the problem of controlling a computer via one's mind is no
longer impossible. But does that mean that we might one day be able
to move objects, to levitate them and manipulate them in midair by
pure thought?
One possibility would be to coat our walls with a room-temperature superconductor, assuming that such a device could be created one
day. Then if we were to place tiny electromagnets inside of our household objects, we could make them levitate off the floor via the Meissner
effect, as we saw in Chapter 1. If these electromagnets were controlled
by a computer, and this computer were wired to our brain, then we
come portable, perhaps even wearable on one's clothes. And the
clumsy wires may be dispensed with if the chip can be made wireless,
so the implant can seamlessly communicate to the outside world.
It is only a matter of time before other parts of the brain can be activated in this way. Scientists have already mapped out the surface of
the top of the brain. (If one graphically draws illustrations of our
hands, legs, head, and back onto the top of our head, representing
where these neurons are connected in general, we find something
called the "homunculus," or little man. The image of our body parts,
written over our brain, resembles a distorted man, with elongated fingers, face, and tongue, and shrunken trunk and back.)
It should be possible to place silicon chips at different parts of the
surface of the brain so that different organs and appendages can be activated by the power of pure thought. In this fashion, any physical activity that can be performed by the human body can be duplicated via
this method. In the future one could imagine a paralyzed person living
in a special psychokinetically designed home, able to control the airconditioning, TV, and all the electrical appliances by the power of
sheer thought.
In time one could envision a person's body encased in a special
"exoskeleton," allowing a paralyzed person total freedom of mobility.
Such an exoskeleton could, in principle, even give someone powers beyond those of a normal person, making him into a bionic being who
can control the enormous mechanical power of his superlimbs by
thought alone.
So the problem of controlling a computer via one's mind is no
longer impossible. But does that mean that we might one day be able
to move objects, to levitate them and manipulate them in midair by
pure thought?
One possibility would be to coat our walls with a room-temperature superconductor, assuming that such a device could be created one
day. Then if we were to place tiny electromagnets inside of our household objects, we could make them levitate off the floor via the Meissner
effect, as we saw in Chapter 1. If these electromagnets were controlled
by a computer, and this computer were wired to our brain, then we