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The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology Hardcover – March 14, 2023
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A new dawn of brain tracking and hacking is coming. Will you be prepared for what comes next?
Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.
Neuroscience has already made all of this possible today, and neurotechnology will soon become the “universal controller” for all of our interactions with technology. This can benefit humanity immensely, but without safeguards, it can seriously threaten our fundamental human rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination.
From one of the world’s foremost experts on the ethics of neuroscience, The Battle for Your Brain offers a path forward to navigate the complex legal and ethical dilemmas that will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves.
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSt. Martin's Press
- Publication dateMarch 14, 2023
- Dimensions6.55 x 0.95 x 9.55 inches
- ISBN-101250272955
- ISBN-13978-1250272959
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Nita Farahany writes with clarity and verve about the promise and perils of the neurotech revolution―offering a fascinating and provocative tour of technologies that have the power to transform our lives for the better and even what it means to be human. More importantly, she encourages a timely global conversation about how to ensure the ethical progress of neurotech to benefit all of humanity.”
―Jennifer Doudna, University of California, Berkeley biochemist, Innovative Genomics Institute founder, Nobel Laureate for co-inventing CRISPR technology
“Essential reading for anyone interested in neurotechnology and its coming impact on our society. Engineering neural implants to decode the brain seems hard to fathom, but this is easy compared to the ethical challenges that lie ahead. Farahany masterfully navigates the issues that confront us.”
―Edward Chang, M.D., Department of Neurological Surgery chairman, University of California, San Francisco
“Farahany poses the critical questions that can guide us as we navigate the hope and hype around neurotechnology, revealing both the promise for patients and the challenge for society. The Battle for Your Brain is a must-read.”
―Thomas Insel, M.D., author of Healing, former National Institute of Mental Health director, and codirector of President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative
“This highly original and timely book explains why we cannot surrender our ‘last bastion of freedom,’ even as we fight with politics and persuasion for access to the fruits of brain science. Farahany alerts us to a struggle for control over access to sensitive personal information that demands everyone’s attention.”
―Anita Allen, Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and professor of philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Law School
“Farahany sounds a timely warning concerning current uses of neurotechnology by corporations and governments for monitoring, recognizing that these uses will grow more powerful and insidious. However, she is no enemy of technology. She presents a balanced view of risks and benefits of its uses by individuals, and makes her arguments in the context of a sophisticated understanding of individual liberty and its potential limits in a free society.”
―Steven Hyman, M.D., Stanley Center of Psychiatric Research director, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
“Nita Farahany persuasively demonstrates that rapidly approaching advances in neurotechnology will change politics, marketing, mental-health care, and dozens of other areas of daily life. The legal and ethical challenges she outlines are daunting, but The Battle for Your Brain arms us with the knowledge needed to fight for a future that includes individual privacy and free will.”
―Jules Polonetsky, CEO, Future of Privacy Forum
“As a well-established thought-leader in ethics and artificial intelligence, Professor Farahany is neither alarmist nor resigned over current trends but offers a measured manifesto of how we can channel technological progress for the benefit of humanity. However, the message is clear: if we do not institute the necessary safeguards now, humanity as we know it is imperiled.”
―Ahmed Shaheed, University of Essex professor, author of the United Nations’ first-ever report on freedom of thought
“The author’s even-handed approach is a refreshing reprieve from the dystopian pessimism that often accompanies discussions of these technologies, and the eye-popping examples show that the future may be closer than many assume. Readers will be enthralled.”
―Publishers Weekly
“An unsettling warning … [an] insightful report.”
―Kirkus
“Ms. Farahany’s call for ‘prudent vigilance and democratic deliberation’ is much needed. In a world where even our dreams can be mined for data, we need more guides like her to think through the challenges ahead.”
―Wall Street Journal
"The Battle for Your Brain is a superb introduction to how rapidly advancing neurotech can either enhance or undermine free minds."
―Reason Magazine
"The book is valuable reading, not only for those interested in neuroscience but also for anyone genuinely concerned about the challenges humanity will face in the near future."
―Science
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : St. Martin's Press (March 14, 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250272955
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250272959
- Item Weight : 10.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.55 x 0.95 x 9.55 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #103,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #77 in Social Aspects of Technology
- #184 in Neurology (Books)
- #338 in Cognitive Psychology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Nita A. Farahany, a futurist and legal ethicist, is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law & Philosophy and founding director of the Initiative for Science & Society at Duke University.
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In her supremely important new book, superstar legal scholar, ethicist and philosopher Nita Farahany argues that we are most definitely not — yet: "The same neuroscience that gives us intimate access to ourselves can allow companies, governments, and all kinds of actors who don’t necessarily have our best interests in mind access too. I find this terrifying as an Iranian American because nothing in the US Constitution, state and federal laws, or international treaties gives individuals even rudimentary sovereignty over their own brains. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but we are rapidly heading toward a world of brain transparency, in which scientists, doctors, governments, and companies may peer into our brains and minds at will. And I worry that in this rapidly approaching future, we will voluntarily or involuntarily surrender our last bastion of freedom: our mental privacy."
Lest you think Farahany is some anti-tech Luddite, you should know that she is *for* brain-enhancement — a pro-Provigil, one might say. However, having worked on this topic for the past ten years, she urges caution around rapid, unprecedented neurotech progress: "I believe that we can and should embrace emerging neurotechnology, but only if we first update our concept of liberty to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of doing so."
In addition to proposing a legal framework around the new concept of cognitive liberty, Farahany provides a comprehensive, deftly drawn picture of the current landscape of extant and arising neurotech gizmos. They are supercool! And also concerning at times. Which is why I need to buy some of them. And why you need to get this book! It's both a microscope into the present and a telescope into the future about something we should all care about a lot: the contents of our cranium, and who has access to it.
-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., Happiness Engineer and author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible , the highest-rated dating book on Amazon, and Should I Go to Medical School?: An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in Medicine
I study and write about these topics and I am in awe of all the examples Professor Farahany has found, not just of potential uses of brain technologies to read, enhance, or control of brains, but of where it is already happening. I have to admit I've mainly been in the "maybe worry in a decade or two" camp. No longer. The chapter on employer uses alone is well worth the price of the book.
That's especially true because this is not a one-sided screed. Farahany recognizes that employers—and all of us—have an interest in avoiding, say, drowsy (or sleeping) truck drivers. She paints with more than black and white, which makes it both more accurate and, importantly, more useful.
Better still, Farahany maps out some legal and social strategies for encouraging good uses of these technologies and avoiding bad ones. Her analysis of the potential for an effective human right to cognitive liberty, encompassing, with differing power, mental privacy, freedom of thought, and self determination (three neatly distinguished concepts) is innovative, powerful, and just might work.
Best of all, it is written in clear, jargon-free, and thoroughly enjoyable English. We're in the same field, arguably we are competitors (though also friends). Part of me thinks I should be jealous, but, instead, I'm just impressed.
Buy this book!
A polymath herself, Farahany integrates peer-reviewed academia with popular culture, and philosophy with children's cartoons and video games, from the fringes of the Internet to the decisions before the halls of power. Her work breathlessly and seamlessly shifts from military, commercial, foreign policy, marketing, and academic impacts of the changing landscape of neuroscience. She does not dumb down the science but puts it in context with the lived world.
As a business leader, this book gives me pause. I run a company that employs over 300 pilots with a strong commitment to safety. This book rightly questions simple decisions I've considered--whether to adopt health and biometric tracking of our pilots to ensure even higher safety. After reading this book, the answer is much more complicated than I considered.
As a quantitative self-focused on my health, who tracks and uploads my biometrics daily, this book examines the benefits and pitfalls of expanding that tracking to my mind.
And as a concerned citizen, this work reinforces that policymakers must rapidly establish norms as larger tech companies race to not just control our clicks but our thoughts.