Brain–Computer Interfaces - Index of

Toward Ubiquitous BCIs 383
physicists could manage – even today – is destroying the earth. Nightmare scenarios
of BCIs gone awry would leave the world intact while rotting humanity.
Fortunately, the nightmare scenario seen in some bci fi – a phlegmatic Orwellian
dystopia of pale, unfulfilled, blindly dependent masses – can be proactively prevented.
Many mechanisms for prevention stem from mechanisms already in place
with other new technologies. BCI researchers are aware of ethical issues, discuss
them openly, and are committed to helping people. We can have at least some
confidence that parents, doctors, psychiatrists, and end users will generally behave
ethically when choosing or recommending BCIs. People may revolutionize BCIs –
many times – but BCIs will remain a minor part of humanity. Humanity may be
changing technology, but that doesn’t necessarily make us less human.
Acknowledgments This paper was supported in part by three grants: a Marie Curie European
Transfer of Knowledge grant Brainrobot, MTKD-CT-2004-014211, within the 6th European
Community Framework Program; the Information and Communication Technologies Coordination
and Support action “FutureBNCI”, Project number ICT-2010-248320; and the Information and
Communication Technologies Collaborative Project action “BrainAble”, Project number ICT-
2010-247447. Thanks to Sara Carro-Martinez and Drs. Alida Allison, Clemens Brunner, Gary
Garcia, Gaye Lightbody, Paul McCullagh, Femke Nijboer, Kai Miller, Jaime Pineda, Gerwin
Schalk, and Jonathan Wolpaw for comments on this manuscript or on some ideas herein. The
sentence about “fardels bear” is paraphrased from Hamlet.
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