Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Blips for Brains

Blips for Brains Co m p l i c a t i o n s STUPID TECH TRICKS Blips for Brains I am wearing a weird, rubbery headband that not only makes me look like an escapee from some technohippie cult, but also uses flexible electrodes to peer inside my brain and relay the data over Bluetooth to my smartphone, which at the same time plays a repetitive, New Age piano loop over beach sound effects into my ears. Wait, this is supposed to help me relax? For $299 you can now buy a consumer electroencephalograph (EEG) device called Muse. It comes with premium-styled, Apple-like packaging and a very hard sell. Muse will help you “do more with your mind,” by teaching you how to calm it. Because, the box explains, “once your mind is calm, your focus can become clear. Your perception can sharpen. Your ideas can flow more readily and with greater purpose.” Just reading this dreck annoys me. Was Nietzsche calm when he wrote Twilight of the Idols? Was Dostoyevsky calm when writing The Brothers Karamazov? Do ideas flow best from beatific drones with maximally placid brainwaves? I try to put such unquiet Think hard about a complicated http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Baffler MIT Press

Blips for Brains

Poole, Steven
The Baffler – Jul 1, 2014
Download PDF
2 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/mit-press/blips-for-brains-b2fHkwq6v9
Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2014 Steven Poole
ISSN
1059-9789
eISSN
2164-926X
DOI
10.1162/BFLR_a_00274
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Co m p l i c a t i o n s STUPID TECH TRICKS Blips for Brains I am wearing a weird, rubbery headband that not only makes me look like an escapee from some technohippie cult, but also uses flexible electrodes to peer inside my brain and relay the data over Bluetooth to my smartphone, which at the same time plays a repetitive, New Age piano loop over beach sound effects into my ears. Wait, this is supposed to help me relax? For $299 you can now buy a consumer electroencephalograph (EEG) device called Muse. It comes with premium-styled, Apple-like packaging and a very hard sell. Muse will help you “do more with your mind,” by teaching you how to calm it. Because, the box explains, “once your mind is calm, your focus can become clear. Your perception can sharpen. Your ideas can flow more readily and with greater purpose.” Just reading this dreck annoys me. Was Nietzsche calm when he wrote Twilight of the Idols? Was Dostoyevsky calm when writing The Brothers Karamazov? Do ideas flow best from beatific drones with maximally placid brainwaves? I try to put such unquiet Think hard about a complicated

Journal

The Baffler – MIT Press

Published: Jul 1, 2014

There are no references for this article.