We live in a surveillance-obsessed society – from cctv cameras to loyalty cards and Big Brother, we just love it. But all this security, convenience and entertainment comes at a price: we are becoming acclimatised to social transparency, we’re easing the way for total surveillance and the end of privacy. Our minds are the last private space we have. For the time being, unless we say something out loud or write it down, nobody knows what we are thinking… but this could all change soon.

Scientists are working on a number of technologies that attempt to decode what we are thinking. They would like to be able not only to read our thoughts but to affect them too.

This, however, is still a long way off. For now, they are mapping brain activity – which bits of our brain are activated when we do, think or feel

particular things. It’s a sort of high-tech phrenology. Imagine the implications once it becomes possible to interpret people’s mental activities in the way we can currently interpret facial expressions.

In this scenario the mind becomes a new site of interest for the state, requiring new protocols of ownership, access, protection and transparency. Police carry out random stop and search scans near crime scenes. Using a special scanner, people are shown images that only the criminal could know about. The device is based on brain fingerprinting technology where a scanner detects a characteristic electrical brainwave response whenever a person responds to a known stimulus. If the person being scanned appears to recognise an image, a light glows and they are taken away for further processing.

Part of 'Between Reality and the Impossible'. Commissioned for the 2010 Saint-Étienne International Design Biennial.

Photo: Jason Evans