The Battle for Your Brain

Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology

By: Nita A. Farahany

Narrated by: Rachel Perry

A new dawn of brain tracking and hacking is coming. Will you be prepared for what comes next?

Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.

Neuroscience has already made all of this possible today, and neurotechnology will soon become the “universal controller” for all of our interactions with technology. This can benefit humanity immensely, but without safeguards, it can seriously threaten our fundamental human rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination.

From one of the world’s foremost experts on the ethics of neuroscience, The Battle for Your Brain offers a path forward to navigate the complex legal and ethical dilemmas that will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

©2023 Nita Farahany (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Nita Farahany writes with clarity and verve about the promise and perils of the neurotech revolution—offering a fascinating and provocative tour of technologies that have the power to transform our lives for the better and even what it means to be human. More importantly, she encourages a timely global conversation about how to ensure the ethical progress of neurotech to benefit all of humanity.”—Jennifer Doudna, University of California, Berkeley biochemist, Innovative Genomics Institute founder, Nobel Laureate for co-inventing CRISPR technology

“Essential reading for anyone interested in neurotechnology and its coming impact on our society. Engineering neural implants to decode the brain seems hard to fathom, but this is easy compared to the ethical challenges that lie ahead. Farahany masterfully navigates the issues that confront us.”—Edward Chang, M.D., Department of Neurological Surgery chairman, University of California, San Francisco

“Farahany poses the critical questions that can guide us as we navigate the hope and hype around neurotechnology, revealing both the promise for patients and the challenge for society. The Battle for Your Brain is a must-read.”—Thomas Insel, M.D., author of Healing, former National Institute of Mental Health director, and codirector of President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative

Timely, fascinating, and vital

I thoroughly enjoyed both the content and the presentation. The issues raised are profound and will affect nothing less than the future of liberty, privacy, and even what it means to be human.

Important book, unfortunately red by the wrong narrator

This vitally important book written by a top expert in the field is unfortunately spoiled in the Audible version by a narrator who would be more suited to young adult fiction books. I would recommend reading the book both for this reason, and because I often found myself wishing I could highlight passages to share.

Pay attention

Very important issues to consider for the future of Pay attention Pay attention Pay attention

Intriguing

Today it was announced that Elon Musk got FDA approval for Neurolink. In light of this, everyone should read or listen to this book to understand what the future of human life will look like.

Eh, yeah, but just know....

First, the good things about this book. There's a lot of really good information, A lot of interesting information.Honsetly this book makes it clear to me that we are wholly and completely screwed. She talks a lot about the need for regulation, and that's fine. But, given time and need,what law or regulation has big corporations ( or, for that matter, the government) NOT been able to circumvent by inventing loopholes? So yeah, we're screwed. But it's a worthy read to know what humanity is up against.
And now, the annoyances. The mid portion of the book bogs down with a deep dive on nuances of the law. She could have made her point with a couple fewer chapters. Also, in several instances, Farahany seems to endorse the viewpoint of a man who was highly critical of people who were skeptical of covid vaccine safety. Which I found ironic because she talks about this a section of the book that addresses mind manipulation. The entire covid Fauci narrative was a mass manipulation using big tech, media, fear, and censorship.
Moving on, the narration is AWFUL. So freaking annoying. For instance, in the reader's annunciation, body is bawdy, technology is technAWlogy, solice is sawlice and salt is solt. And the grandaddy of them all; aspect is aspact.....she actually says "aspact"...in two sentences back to back. The narration made finishing the book a struggle. Sorry Racheal Perry, something for you to work on maybe?
She does have a pleasant voice, which is why I didn't give the narration only one star.

a chilling look @ future neuroscience & free will

I really enjoyed this book. At the same time it scared both me and anybody I shared the ideas with.

I have a bachelor's of Neuroscience and have studied the topic on my own for many years since then. the current state of neurotek or neurotechnology even at the consumer level is much beyond what I expected it was with clear evidence of Neuromancer like technologies within our lifetimes.

Excellent overview of BCI

This was an excellent overview of a rapidly approaching technology that will radically change how we interact with the world. I wish more people would read this book and understand where we are going for better or worse.

John Stuart Mill for the Digital Age

This book wasn’t quite what I expected. I was hoping for a cutting edge book on how our brains are interacting with digital devices and AI. There is a little of that in here. But mostly this is a work of ethical philosophy. It aims at exploring the degree to which governments and businesses should have access to our neural and other biofeedback information without our consent and to what degree we should allow for cognitive enhancing supplements.

For those of you interested in John Stuart Mill and/or the ethical implications that will arise in a future world where our thoughts may be on full display of our employers and governments, then this book is for you! For people like me more interested in how digital technology is influencing our neural networks, it’s best to look elsewhere!

Concerning performance: the narrator does a fantastic job reading the book and brings it to life for our ears!

A New Frontier for Privacy and Basic Human Right

What is in my mind is mine and mine alone. Or is it?

This book is fun, futuristic, and thought-provoking. It combines story-telling with ethical and legal analysis for and against the use of neurotechnology and the data it generates. It explores the limitations, benefits, and dangers of obtaining and utilizing "brain data" through the lens of technology, philosophy, sociology, and law.

Professor Farahany from Duke University Law School is a leading scholar on emerging technologies' ethical, legal, and social impact implications. She explores the dynamic between the intention of using emerging neurotechnology and its consequences (especially the unexpected but not unforeseeable ones) with both logical clarity and real-life complication.

If you like this book and want to learn about the human brain, check out "A Thousand Brains, A New Theory of Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins (2021) and "Zero to Birth, How the Human Brain Is Built" by W.A. Harris. If you are interested in the application and implication of new technology, check out "Power and Prediction, The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence" by Ajay Agrawal, etc. (2022) and "Power and Prediction, The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence" by Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Qiufan (2021).

Top Notch Information

Whether you're already experiencing these things, or you just have an interest in this topic, this book is for you. I highly recommend it! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️