Which will you choose? The red or the blue pill?
Sony patents “real life Matrix”
THE Japanese entertainment giant Sony has patented an idea for transmitting data directly into the brain, with the goal of enabling a person to see movies and play video games in which they smell, taste and perhaps even feel things, it was reported today.
The patent – based only on a theory, not on any invention – marks the first step towards a “real-life Matrix”, New Scientist says in next Saturday’s issue.
In the sci-fi film of that name, cyber-reality is projected into the brains of people via an electrode feed at the back of their necks.
In Sony’s patent, the technique would be entirely non-invasive – it would not use brain implants or other surgery to manipulate the brain.
The patent has few details, describing only a device that would fire pulses of ultrasound at the head to modify the firing patterns of neurons in targeted parts of the brain.
Something tells me that, in this Matrix, the “blue screen of death” would be a really bad thing.