An Ecstasy Machine?

 

In December 2001, Forbes magazine published an article protesting the lack of (and discussing the need for) an “Ecstasy Machine”.

Author Barbara Ehrenreich is quoted here >

 

 

“So why haven’t we found a reliable, nontoxic technology for inducing the experience of ecstasy?”

 

Good Question.

 

“The wonder is that we’re still relying on archaic, millennia-old techniques of ecstasy at all. In an era of wireless Internet access and similar wonders, you’d think we’d have come up with something better than drums, flashing lights, and ingested plant alkaloid derivatives. Look at it this way: Ecstasy is one capacity of the human brain; computation is another. With computer technology, we’ve expanded our computational capacity several billionfold. Isn’t there some way we could use our brains—or our brains augmented with computer technology—to expand and control our capacity for ecstatic experience?”

 

Exploring the question further…

 

“I recently took this question to an eclectic group of digerati, science writers, and fringy, imaginative thinkers. None of them, it turns out, is working on an ecstasy machine or knows of anyone who is.”

 

We know who is.

 

“It could be doable, was the general consensus, and in a market-driven, technology-obsessed culture, what’s doable tends to get done.”

 

And it has!

 

 

 

A working prototype of that so-called non-existent system does exist, right now, in a California design studio. Its creators anticipate the coming together of insightful partners and investors, to help bring this gift to the masses.

 

The full text of this Forbes Magazine article is presented here: The X Best Thing

 

 
 
©2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 R. D. Nelson. All Rights Reserved.