When it comes to awareness, thoughts are much like breathing. You can be focused on your breathing for a while, but most of the time we aren't aware of it, and we just let the brain do the work somewhere in the background. Similar to breathing, we are not monitoring our thoughts either. We just let them flow in and out of our awareness, induced by memory or by input from our senses. Thinking about a specific matter or solving a problem also ignite our areas of the brain in charge of processing thoughts. A stream of words, sounds, images and feelings, show up and leave our “working memory” every few seconds. But do we actually control the flow of thoughts, or manipulate them in a similar way we can control our breathing? Well, it's not that easy.
Since the beginning of mankind, we simply didn't have the need to be aware of our thought-stream, because nobody could “hear” or “see” it but us. That's why it's so difficult for us to do it now. Meditation is one way to step back and “see” your stream of thoughts consciously (in a way that is directly perceptible to and under the control of the person concerned), or even to clear our “working memory” out of thoughts. And as you may allready know, meditation and thougt-control takes practice.
Currently, brain-computer interfaces are able to distinguish our thoughts used to give “orders” to brain-controlled device from the rest of our thinking and sensory input. Brain activity that's not a part of commands is interpreted as “noise”, and it's not used by BCI. As the technology evolves, BCIs will be more capable of deciphering the rest of our brain activity and recognize emotional state.
Thnik about a stressful day at work 20 years from now. All the workers in your company has been given a thought-controlled communication device, what used to be known as a smartphone. You are trying to send a report to your superior, about the project that is not going the way it's supposed to. At the same time, your working memory of the brain is flooded with informations like: your colleague who didn't do his task well, you don't like this work environment, you have two meetings waiting you today, you won't be home on time to pick up your kid from school, you remember other job offer you passed on last month, etc.. At the IT center of the company is where the main software system monitors and records all communication. It's very likely that human resources department would collect additional data such as emotional state and thoughts of it's employees as soon as specific brain patterns related to stress and dissatisfaction show up at the mainframe.
Will you be able to hide your “i hate my job” thought from your employers?!
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