It’s time to start talking about neural rights

What would surveillance capitalism be like if big tech could see inside our actual minds?

Right now, our phones and wearable technology like smart watches are not attached to us, but “the very close future is to start embodying all these technologies,” according to researcher, artist, and activist Albert Barqueduran. 

The overreach of surveillance capitalism, and what happens when humans begin to assimilate these technologies into our bodies, is the central idea behind the Synapticon, Albert’s performance at Sónar+D, the technology side-event of the electronic music festival. 

There, the researcher who goes by the artistic name Albert.DATA will neurohack themself in real time, laying bare their own brain activity in front of a live audience, to spark conversations ahead of what they term a “dangerous moment” for humanity. 

Using an EEG cup brain scanner, they have created a system that translates thoughts into natural text, and then uses that as a trigger to generate audiovisual content. The aim of the performance will be to create “a whole audiovisual performance just with very specific mental states without using any motoric skills in a sense, not pressing any button.” 

To carry this out, Albert.DATA will be focusing intensely on a specific task: discussing, internally in their own mind, all the ideas behind this concept of the Synapticon, which is related to Michel Foucault’s concept of the panopticon, “which is about control and surveillance that is so embedded in our structure as society and dynamics that we forget that we are in constant control and surveillance.”

Albert’s Synapticon expands on Foucault’s idea, into the realm of embodied technology. “We've been talking these last years of a digital panopticon, how all the data that we generate through Internet of Things, biometrics, algorithms, social media, is already a way to be constantly controlled or monitored. When all these technologies are embodied, then we are reaching an extremely dangerous moment of a full disintegration of mental privacy.”

The performance is a piece of activism, the Synapticon is making a statement about neural rights. We “don't perceive” embodied technology as a powerful threat just yet, as it feels like a distant possibility. But as soon as they are incorporated into our selves, “which is the next step of technology,” a whole new dynamic of structures and economies of neurotechnologies will be opened up. 

“So let's start discussing, as soon as possible, the implications. What are the regulations that we should start implementing right now,” Albert asks, “before it’s too late?”