“Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime is
death.” (p.27)
In 1984, there are agents called the
Thought Police who can “read what’s inside people’s minds.” They can’t
literally read people’s thoughts, so I am guessing that they catch people doing
crimes by finding evidences and/or just by plain assumption. Either way, the
main protagonist, Winston, is afraid because he knows that he will be vanished
if he runs into a Thought Police. According to this website: http://www.mindcontrol.se/?page_id=7488
our National Security Agency (NSA), has developed a technology called Remote
Neural Monitoring. This technology can apparently control the brain in order to
read any criminal thoughts. I’m not sure about the legitimacy of this
information but it is still unnerving to think that someone out there is
thinking about these ideas and devices that may be able to read our thoughts.
Many people will say that they have nothing to worry about because they are not
guilty of anything but think about this: just because someone has criminal
thoughts does not mean that they are actually intending to do it. This may
eventually lead to false accusations and a reason for the authorities to
restrain or lock us up because of our thoughts that may just be a subconscious
thought that pops up into our minds without any of our control. I think that
there are too many negatives with this technology for it to be a good device to
use in a criminal case.
I agree with what you are saying in a sense that this technology will cause more problems than fix them. If this technology does exist or could exist in the near future it would be one step closer to 1984. I feel like the word "thought crime" doesn't do enough justice to define what the though police are actually doing, which is finding evidence and assuming the worst outcome. This reminded me of the sum of people who are thrown into jails for long periods of time and are later announced to have been guilty due to faulty evidence; similarly, if this Neural Monitoring technology were to exist there would be more bad than good.
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