New Scientist News - Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix

Hat Tip: The Australian, which put me wise to this article.

I have a problem with the granting of patents for what are known as "prophetic inventions"--which is to say, "vapor inventions" that do not have so much as a working plan. But that's beyond scope here.

The real prophetic significance of this patent (which I could not find, BTW, in the records of the US Patent and Trademark Office; Sony must have filed their patent application in Japan) is that it represents several things that multiple prophets have warned of. First of all, however, this does not represent the Mark of the Beast--though it jmight represent the required worship of the Beast and his image [Revelation 13:15]. The mark, or cattle-brand stamp (Greek charagma, is mostly a mark of loyalty. This invention, if you call it that, goes far beyond a mere mark. In fact, it goes far beyond the mere reading of a person's mind. We deal here with the ability to write onto a person's mind, by means that bypass the classic Five Senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Sony seeks to use ultrasonic impulses to impress on a user the impression of having smelled something, or tasted something, without his actually having smelled or tasted anything.

The Hollywood establishment has toyed with this kind of project before. First came the motion picture Firefox (produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Clint Eastwood; Warner Bros. Pictures, 1982), which followed a US pilot assigned to infiltrate the old Soviet Union and steal a Soviet prototype of a Mach 5/6 fighter-interceptor having a thought-controlled weapons system. This system would read a pilot's thoughts, through undefined "sensors in his helmet" (probably a body-contact electroencephalogram), and translates these thoughts into commands to select, direct, and fire weapons. Then came another motion picture, titled Brainstorm (produced and directed by Douglas Trumbull, with Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher, Cliff Robertson, et al., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1983), describing (in a rather disjointed fashion) the corporate and ethical tribulations surrounding an invention that could first read and record all the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile experiences of a designated recording artist and then write the whole experience directly into the brain of a subject wearing a specially designed helmet or headset!

Firefox was alarming enough, given the military implications. But Sony has now taken a step toward implementing the Brainstorm scenario, and that's worse. (Actually, MGM could probably sue Sony for infringing on their idea, if you accept the premise for a patent on a "prophetic invention", since after all it was MGM's idea for a movie plot device before Sony got the idea of using it for real. But I digress.)

Why is this worse? With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, let me count the ways:

1. When you project program content directly into the brain, you make the experience as close to "real" as is any actual experience. After enough exposures to the technique, whether to one repeated program or several, the user could forget the difference between fact and fiction. This might explain why some of the earliest men in the Calvinist camp condemned fiction, drama, or poetry (other than the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, etc.) as being as wrongheaded as deliberately adding to or subtracting from the BIble--the notion being that life flows according to Divine plan, and fiction is a way of suggesting that God might choose a different plan. If you find that extreme, then you must consider this real-life Brainstorm invention to be the opposite extreme, and one far less healthy--for if you cannot tell fact from fiction, then neither can you tell truth from lies. Put that in your father of lies files.
2. This could turn into the ultimate in pornography. Imagine male (or female) sex actors recording the experience of copulation, or other even more perverse experiences. Now imagine playing back a recording that a person of the opposite sex initially made. Now stop imagining that; that's an obvious Matthew 5:28 violation--and also one for your II Timothy 3:1-5 files.
3. The Sony Brainstorm apparatus could also be an instrument of torture. One of the things that the Brainstorm characters dealth with was the horrifying use of their technique to make torture recordings. They would recruit someone willing to submit to torture and then record his experiences. One character played back a torture tape by accident and went crazy. Just think of the use that the Beast would make of such a technique!
4. Brainstorm would be an even better, and more chilling, military technique than Firefox. Brainstorm could substitute totally for the pilot's own eyes and ears--in which case the pilot would seal himself up in his aircraft, out of sight or contact with the outside, except such contact that Brainstorm would mediate. But Brainstorm could also make a pilot think he's shooting down a truly repulsive enemy when in fact he's vaporizing a city full of innocent people. Behold the ultimate in brainwashing--and without the mass hypnosis that Jerry B. Jenkins predicted. The Beast need only outfit all his soldiers with permanent receivers, through which he could make them believe anything, and break down all their compunctions.

Sony says that the technique is theoretical only, and not even experimental. But as New Scientist pointed out, experts in the field suggest that Sony might have something. If they do, then it's something deadly and chilling--and further evidence that the End of All Things is coming.