dark on a pot-holed motorway by an unlicensed drunkenteenage joyrider. Who would intentionally hitch a ride with this car? Theproblem is, that far too seldom do we have the choice not to sit in thepassenger seat."

For all the authors who have looked into the future with despair, at a timewhen people will suffer under a technological despotism, it is thesedevelopments we are witnessing today which contribute to the horror of thefuture. The present is printed on the pages of Orwell's "1984" and the timesare without doubt progressing alongside technological advances which, whilethey should be a blessing for humanity, they are instead threatening toeradicate individuality and human freedom.

These electrodes were placed in the brain of a female patient at LangbroMental Hospital in Stockholm in the early 1970's after she unwittingly hadbeen put to sleep.

The technology was refined and in the 1950's it was possible to warm up thecranium so that it reached a degree of pliability that allowed the insertionof electrodes without trepanation and resulted in a dramatic rise in thenumber of victims. Small transmitters which could be inserted through thenasal passages with ease were developed during the 1960s and the introductionof an injectable microchip substance a decade later were to place a part ofthe population under neurological computer control.

Even 40 years ago, the future reality which most people still see asscience fiction was a viable possibility - the transmission of mental activitywithout

trace over vast areas of a country with the controller able to influencenot only cerebral functions like brain waves but even specific processes suchas, desire, pain and pleasure.

It was back in 1965 that P.M. Persson, a researcher at FOA's (The SwedishDefence Research Institution) section 3, one of several departments involvedin information technology and brain computer interfacing, wrote in an article:"Telemetry can be characterized as the science of the transmission of datawhich is not normally available. The word telemetry comes from the Greekwords, tele which means far off; and metry, which means to measure. Telemetryhas become a valuable aid in many different areas of research.

An essential part of bio-telemetry encompasses the transmission ofdata. This occurs mostly with help of a surgically implanted transmitter...Thetechnology has been developed quite extensively in medicalresearch.

"However, it was the violation of patients which was being developed underbiotelemetry research. What he had reported as being well under development asmuch as thirty years ago, was that a large number of people were beinginterfaced with computers.

In the same year as P.M. Persson wrote his article, SundsvallHospital had already started the implantation of transmitters in unwittingvictims, during routine operations. The dark area in the frontal brain is seenin most x-rays and is an obvious sign of a reduced oxygen level caused by theradiowaves.