Another trope I detest in speculative fiction (as well as vampires!) is telepathy. This is perhaps the most overused element, even in otherwise “hard” science fiction (author Anne McCaffrey and the Star Trek series, for example, are notorious for this), yet there is no scientific evidence for it – or other psionic powers. A brain produces very weak electro-chemical signals – what mechanism would be used to “project” these? And how would it be directed? A radio signal goes in all directions, so I don’t see how a single mind could be targeted.
Synthetic telepathy might be possible, though – “Synthetic Telepathy For US Military Borg-Style”, “Nerve-tapping neckband used in ‘telepathic’ chat” – where a neural implant or neck collar converts thought impulses into radio signals that can be transmitted to other implants.
One related aspect of the Avatar movie which bothers me is how the consciousness of the human operators is transferred to their hybrid Na’vi avatars. It seems to be depicted as a literal transfer, where the operator uses some sort of equipment to leave their brain and take up residence in their avatar’s. The description in the scriptment:
The human volunteer then becomes a CONTROLLER. Using PSIONIC LINK technology, the human controller can remotely control the avatar body out in the wilds of Pandora. The controller receives all sensory input, and provides all motor control to the body. Essentially, the controller lives through the avatar, and is completely unaware of his own body while linked. Each avatar is genetically keyed to its respective human controller.
[…]
His head is fitted into a helmet-like device…a PSIONIC LINK INTERFACE which senses and transmits his mental energy, as well as filling his brain with the return signal. This is usually called, simply, the LINK. He is under the link because he is spending the voyage linked to his avatar body which is nearby in its own container. Like two twins in the womb they are communing at a deep level of pre-conscious intimacy, with the results that the avatar’s brain has been imprinted with the patterns of Josh’s cerebral cortex. The biological equivalent of initializing the hard-drive in a computer.
Psionics again! Also, in the scriptment ending, Jake’s mind is (spoilers ahead!) permanently transferred to his avatar’s while his human body dies. As one’s mind is, as far as scientists know, inextricably linked with one’s physical brain, I don’t see how such a transferral would be possible.
Perhaps James Cameron was thinking of robot teleoperators when he wrote that, but operators are still in their bodies, only seeing images transmitted from the remote robot. A possibly-plausible version of the avatars would be to use the aforementioned neural implants radio-transmitting images from the visual cortex, but the avatars would have to then be robots (or have much of their brain replaced with robotic controller elements, which is a bit gruesome).
“Ghost in the Shell: Why Our Brains Will Never Live in the Matrix” at h+ asserts that uploading the human mind into a computer or elsewhere – a desire of some transhumanists – is not possible: “biological software is inseparable from hardware”. However, brain transplants into grown clones, or repairing the brain neurons as we age might be possible with future technology. For my part, I would like my body repaired with nanotechnology so it is fully healthy, and the effects of ageing kept at bay.
