Brain Scanning will deliver Thought Crime OR Mental Superpowers

“Amazingly, in just a single 13-minute session participants learned to easily [mentally] control the size of the flame and were able to reduce their pain by over 50%”

I am less optimistic than this article is. Not about the technology, which seems solid, but in Singularity’s Children, Spex are ubiquitous and the scanning and insights they deliver are used by governments to sell ideology, rather than by the wearer to elevate consciousness. 

My #top100 #scifi Num:46 Caves of Steel

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2fYSH7K

Life is cheap on Earth. Overpopulation and fear of attack have forced the population down into subterranean megacities. Elijah Baile and R. Daneel Olivaw (R for Robot) are dispatched to solve the murder of a ‘Spacer’, a person not from Earth, but one the pampered, Elite, K-Selected humans who moved beyond the Solar System with their legions of Robot man servants. Like Monty Python’s British officers, Spacers shouldn’t die. It is simply politically unacceptable.
Continuing the run of Asimov, this is another of his Science Fiction classics, ostensibly a story of robots and spaceships, but with a payload of prejudice and privilege tucked inside.  

My #top100 #scifi Num:47 The Naked Sun

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2gZ5pEC

Social commentary masquerading as a Sci-Fi detective story. A planet of people avoiding human contact can only interact with each other via screens and their robots – uncanny and this was first published in 1956
Note: I realise now that the cover looks like a giant porn-star-bot having sex with a spaceship. I had this on my bookshelf for years as a child and it never occurred to me…