World Economic Forum Shows Video Of Authorities Tracking Your Brain Waves, Reminding Everyone Of A "Black Mirror" Episode

The Chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, announced his plans for a "deep systemic and structural restructuring of our world" at the G20 Summit last year. This annual conference brings together various countries such as Germany, the US, Canada, China, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and more, and Schwab used his time there to promote the idea of restructuring the world's entire economy and accomplishing a "political transformation."

He didn't give specific details on what that restructuring would look like, but it's not hard to get a general idea of what this might look like when you take into account everything else that Schwab and the WEF have talked about in the past, such as allowing the government to control everything, taking away all private ownership of property, and even tracking people's every move with microchips. One video in particular from the WEF's annual meeting in Davos even promoted the idea of your brain waves being tracked by law enforcement or even your boss and coworkers.

World Economic Forum Shows Video of Authorities Tracking Your Brain Waves, Reminding Everyone of a "Black Mirror" Episode

On January 16, the WEF held its 2023 annual meeting in Davos, where "decision-makers" from government, business, and civil society gathered to discuss global issues that are in our near future. One part of the conference was particularly harrowing, where the presenters showed a video about how people's brain waves could be tracked one day. It was a cartoon video that began with a woman working at the office. She was happy with her work for the day, so she sat back to enjoy her productivity, when her computer picked up on her brain waves. It could sense that she was happy, so it started to play a song that she enjoys, "sending chills down your spines."

There's a program running in the background of the woman's computer screen that measures and tracks her brain waves. She can scroll through her brain data and see her stress levels rising, causing a peak in beta brain activity; that's when an alert comes up to take a brain break. With the swipe of a mouse, the woman sends a message to her doctor and asks them to look at her brain data. Then the woman's mind starts to wander to her colleague that she has a crush on. She now worries that her boss will notice these "amorous feelings" she has toward this coworker, because apparently, her boss can track what's going on with her brain.

The boss approaches the woman and congratulates her on her hard work, even offering her a bonus. However, the next day at work, government officials show up because they have subpoenas on everyone's brain waves; a coworker has been arrested for committing wire fraud, so the authorities need to look for synchronized brain activity between that employee and the people—"co-consipirators"—he's been working with. The woman starts shaking because she's nervous about all the times that she has collaborated with this person, even though she knows she's innocent of any kind of fraud. The video is called "The Battle for Your Brain."

When the video ends, a woman walks out onto the stage and says, "What do you think? Is it a future you're ready for? You may be surprised to learn that it's a future that has already arrived."

TikToker @justthetip.x shared this clip and asked why it feels like we're living in a Black Mirror episode. Many people in the comments agreed and even joked that they stopped writing episodes for Black Mirror because "reality is worse." Someone commented, "thought police."

There's one Black Mirror episode in particular that reminds many people of this WEF video. In season 1, there's an episode called "The Entire History of You." It follows a married couple, Liam and Ffion Foxwell. They, along with all their friends and just about everyone else on the planet, have a chip implanted in their neck that allows them to rewind and play back and experiences they've had throughout their life. They just use a little remote to scroll through all their memories to remember what has happened in the past. In the beginning of the episode, Liam goes through airport security, but instead of going through something that resembles TSA, he just allows the authorities to scroll through the last 48 hours of his memory bank in order to check for any nefarious behavior. The chip is referred to as a "grain."

Liam and Ffion have a baby, and when they're away for dinner with friends, they come home and relieve the sitter, only to scroll through the chip in their baby's brain to ensure that the child wasn't harmed during her time with the nanny. The couple's relationship unravels throughout the episode as Liam suspects that his wife is having an affair with a suspicious character named Jonas. Spoiler alert: It turns out Ffion was in fact cheating on Liam. He discovers this because he forces Jonas to reveal his memory to him, and he then goes home to force Ffion to reveal her memories as well.

Throughout the episode, there is one character named Hallam who stands out from the crowd because she refuses to use a "grain." She had her chip removed a while ago, and she says it's very freeing to not have her memory recorded constantly. People think she's odd, but at the end of the episode, Liam ends up removing his chip as well because he just can't bear the sad memories of his now ex-wife and estranged daughter.

Although the WEF video deals with brain waves and not visible memories in a chip, this kind of technology being promoted by this organization certainly reminds us of the type of technology in Black Mirror. How far away from this future are we? Why is the WEF even considering this kind of technology? Some people commented on the TikTok clip and claimed that the WEF was simply warning of what could happen in the future if we allowed such technology to develop, but many others believe there is a much more nefarious nature about this video. There really is a battle for our brains, and it's not comforting at all to consider that our boss, doctors, and law enforcement could one day track our brain waves and use the data to make decisions about our job and eventually our freedom.