Page - 189 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

Cyberneuroethics • 189 or she may misunderstand, or not realise, what is to be uncovered and what he or she may be giving up. Because of such concerns (amongst other reasons), the U.S. bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe is not convinced that nonclinical brain scans are ethically appropriate. He believes, instead, that the skull should represent ‘an abso- lute zone of privacy’. In this regard, he mentions the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), who suggested that the ultimate power, or right of a person, is to say ‘No’. Wolpe observes: ‘What happens if that right is taken away  – if I say “No” and they strap me down and get the information anyway? I want to say the state never has a right to use those technologies.’410 But it should always be remembered, in this context, that investigators may already have personal information, such as physical evidence, which can be far more ‘personal’ than thoughts. For example, many individuals would probably expect greater privacy relating to the information found in their blood than in the content of their memories or other utterances on a variety of matters.411 Privacy and Surveillance Mindful of the scope of developments in neurotechnologies, any understand- ing and appreciation of the concept of privacy in the future is still up for debate. In this respect, the U.S. journalist and entrepreneur Zoltan Istvan, who ran for U.S. President in 2016 for the Transhumanist Party, indicated: Privacy is a relatively new concept in history, and while it might have served the wealthy for a few thousand years, it’s not a long term phenomenon. Machine intelligence doesn’t need to be so disconnected. It will discard with privacy. You’re seeing that already with how much tech is making people’s lives so much less private. Transparency will create a society of trust, openness, liberty, and most importantly, safety. He added that: I think life and evolution will probably take transparency all the way  – where everything is known to everyone all the time. Some call this a mind hive. But understand, we won’t be human anymore. We’ll be far more machine, driven by logic and functionality.412 Similarly, commenting on the future, Susan Greenfield predicts that the term ‘privacy’ will increasingly become arcane and a word that only very old people will occasionally use. Everything will then be public.413 She suggests: ‘We would no longer have private thoughts; rather, we would effectively be part of a larger network, a mere node in a thinking, conscious system that This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.