The mind has no firewall

December 16, 2002 9:07 AM

"The mind has no Firewall" A discussion on the development of "Psychotronic" weapons From the US Army publication, 'Parameters': "An entirely new arsenal of weapons, based on devices designed to introduce subliminal messages or to alter the body's psychological and data-processing capabilities, might be used to incapacitate individuals." Ominous? Inevitable?
posted by troutfishing (11 comments total)

it would be a waste of money, if the psychology professor, who taught that subliminal messages had no effect on the body beyond the first few seconds, can be trusted.
posted by moz at 9:12 AM on December 16, 2002

Ominous? Inevitable?
"news" and advertising have damn near incapacitated me.
posted by quonsar at 9:21 AM on December 16, 2002

ah, snowcrash.

and you just know that the army do have personal mental firewalls in the works.

and of course eventually there will be a crippled version of the firewall released to the public, so that whatever industry is given regulation of this technology is allowed to continue the whole escalation monstrosity a la telemarketing/caller id/call blocking.

enlightenment and strengthening of will through meditation will have to be outlawed, of course.
posted by dorian at 10:05 AM on December 16, 2002

Metafilter: Where every 25th frame is reserved for our new mind-control overlords.
posted by squared at 10:14 AM on December 16, 2002

I developed a trick for "clearing the cache" when I was hanging around with a certain friend of mine. Some people like to shock people with whatever disgusting/sexual entendre they can drag out of the conversation. My friend was startling good at it. She's an intelligent and witty conversationalist sometimes, but other times... Also there's this deeply socially dysfuntional kid who comes into work sometimes with his mom. He's impulsive and irritating and fascinating to consider as a psycho-social weapon because he gets on everyone's nerves.

Anyway, cry havoc and let slip the memes of war I say.
posted by wobh at 10:16 AM on December 16, 2002

This is rather small program which might help you to remember foreign words. Do you know anything about effect of 25th frame ? It seems you cann't see or even notice any information, but in deed you just don't catch to awake the one you have seen or noticed and the information leaves in your memory. I don't know nothing about the effective of this method, but it doesn't take any effort or takes the minimum of ones. I've made the universal program which could show you the words to learn with different frequence and continuance.

25th Frame.
posted by Niahmas at 10:33 AM on December 16, 2002

Soldiers carrying beepers and mobile phones rather than guns

Just goes to show that Steven Spielberg really is a visionary!
posted by Foosnark at 10:36 AM on December 16, 2002

I, for one, welcome our new psychotronic overlords.
Actually I agree with moz that subliminally adding a message to someones mind is bunk. However, torture stories from Vietnam show, I think, that even the toughest minded can either be broken or resort to suicide.
When you combine hypersonic sound systems with any of these psychotronic disruptors what you get is the ability to locally project any sound/dialog into a person at the same time as you are torturing/disrupting them. Even if you knew how this was happening to you, I think the evidence indicates that any person would either resort to suicide(effectively) or become zombified.
posted by nasim at 10:42 AM on December 16, 2002

The mind is pliable and open to all kinds of "reprogramming". That's been known for centuries. "Non-lethal" weapons like ELF have been tried for decades. Anti-nuke protesters in the UK were supposedly subjected to sonic weapons that made them ill during the 80s. And let's not forget liquid LSD which was sprayed at individuals during the 60s. Heck, even planting one of those radio transmitters in a tooth (a favorite claim of schizophrenics) can be used as a weapon. All of these things are psychotronic weapons if you define it broadly enough. If you disrupt or change the thinking process on an unwilling subject, its a weapon AFAIAC. As such these things are not only inevitable, they're already here.
posted by infowar at 10:50 AM on December 16, 2002

ah, snowcrash.

Tangentially, I was just about to say that "The Mind Has No Firewall" sounds like the best-titled Philip K. Dick shorty no one's ever heard of.
posted by donkeyschlong at 10:56 AM on December 16, 2002

Donkeyschlong- You're right! ... you know I (just tonight) found this text in my basement, signed "P.K. Dick"...
posted by troutfishing at 9:08 PM on December 17, 2002