Mind control

People are building real, working, no bullshit mind control machines.  Of course they are hilariously primitive, the cave paintings of the marvellous world of publishing, but they seriously set up equipment that let a human stimulate a rat's brain to twitch its tail just by thinking.  Obviously people are worried that in twenty years when this tech is mature that Big Brother will control all of our thoughts and dystopia and such but I don't care much about that.  Either it will happen or it won't but either way the fun part is trying to think about what other crazy stuff will come out of it.

So here is the first thing that came to my mind... sex.  No matter what a new technology entails the first thing that will happen is people will try to use it for sex because that is what we do.  The internet?  Porn.  Cell phones?  Sexting.  Battery chargers that operate without any direct connection?  Vibrators.  Vibrating things?  Also vibrators.  I figure that a mind to mind device that is primitive will almost immediately be used for two things:  Inducing pleasure and inducing pain.  Clearly once we can induce pleasure directly the human race will devolve into seven billion people sitting around drooling while hooked up to pleasure machines so let's imagine we figure out pain first.  I am sure that what will happen is people will build mind to mind devices that let them perform BDSM on each other without that nasty problem of leaving bruises and blood.  "And now I am going to make you feel like you just got your ass smacked really damn hard!"  "YEOWTCH!"

What I wonder is whether or not pain will be treated differently when it is caused not by physical damage but instead by direct brain stimulation.  Will parents be allowed to hook up misbehaving children and blast the hell out of them as punishment if there is actually no long lasting (physical) effect?  Will the state begin to use pain machines as a method of punishment?  Would that actually work as a deterrent?  My feeling is that we will ban the use of such machines on children for any purpose and not allow it as a deterrent.  Adults will be allowed to do any damn crazy thing they want to each other, consent permitting of course, but otherwise such machines will not be used.  Probably if they manage to make a portable one it will be used as a replacement for a taser and presumably have all the same problems of lack of safety and overzealous use.

So yeah, kinky sex, a society destroyed by unlimited pleasure, and a police state's wet dream.  Maybe this isn't such a great invention after all...