re: #9 WindUpBird

The technology now exists to read minds :D

In a few decades, people will just be able to think of images and beam them into each others heads with cheap technology.

or maybe a few years

It’s going to be a fairly long wait for the tech to become anything close to cheap. The field strength of an average medical MRI machine runs between 1.5 to 3 Tesla (experimental medical models have gone as high as 8T.) and relies on superconducting circuits to function. The cooling systems for these circuits require their own expensive safety devices and precautions, you need oxygen monitors, powerful venting fans and exhaust systems in case a quench boils off a bunch of helium and asphyxiates you. Now permanent rare earth magnets currently top out just below this 1.5T threshold, but there’s some hope of doubling their strength through nanoparticle exchange coupling (a complex way of saying a very fine particle mixture of traditional iron-cobalt and rare earth compounds.) The article also doesn’t mention if an injection of IV contrast dye is required for the procedure.

So while there’s some hope that this might be on the long term horizon there are some very high hurdles to making the technology affordable for the masses.