The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology

Farahany's book is the rare work of a rare academic--applied, prescient, and timely. This work will long be looked at as a first clarion call for the right to cognitive liberty and clearly setting the stage for one of the largest fights for the next decades--aptly titled The Battle for Your Brain.A polymath herself, Farahany integrates peer-reviewed academia with popular culture, and philosophy with children's cartoons and video games, from the fringes of the Internet to the decisions before the halls of power. Her work breathlessly and seamlessly shifts from military, commercial, foreign policy, marketing, and academic impacts of the changing landscape of neuroscience. She does not dumb down the science but puts it in context with the lived world.As a business leader, this book gives me pause. I run a company that employs over 300 pilots with a strong commitment to safety. This book rightly questions simple decisions I've considered--whether to adopt health and biometric tracking of our pilots to ensure even higher safety. After reading this book, the answer is much more complicated than I considered.As a quantitative self-focused on my health, who tracks and uploads my biometrics daily, this book examines the benefits and pitfalls of expanding that tracking to my mind.And as a concerned citizen, this work reinforces that policymakers must rapidly establish norms as larger tech companies race to not just control our clicks but our thoughts.

Initially heard author interviewed on Jordan Harbinger podcast. Bought the Audible format, 25% of the way through bought the hardcover. Book starts off strong, then melts into a puddle of barely relevant subject matter. Everything has something to do with one's brain, but not everything has anything to do with the "battle" for one's brain. Returned the hardcover as the book is not nearly as insightful as touted.

If you are interested in what our exploding knowledge of the human brain may do for, and to, our societies and ourselves, this is a must read.I study and write about these topics and I am in awe of all the examples Professor Farahany has found, not just of potential uses of brain technologies to read, enhance, or control of brains, but of where it is already happening. I have to admit I've mainly been in the "maybe worry in a decade or two" camp. No longer. The chapter on employer uses alone is well worth the price of the book.That's especially true because this is not a one-sided screed. Farahany recognizes that employers—and all of us—have an interest in avoiding, say, drowsy (or sleeping) truck drivers. She paints with more than black and white, which makes it both more accurate and, importantly, more useful.Better still, Farahany maps out some legal and social strategies for encouraging good uses of these technologies and avoiding bad ones. Her analysis of the potential for an effective human right to cognitive liberty, encompassing, with differing power, mental privacy, freedom of thought, and self determination (three neatly distinguished concepts) is innovative, powerful, and just might work.Best of all, it is written in clear, jargon-free, and thoroughly enjoyable English. We're in the same field, arguably we are competitors (though also friends). Part of me thinks I should be jealous, but, instead, I'm just impressed.Buy this book!

I bought this book after seeing the amazing write up in the Wall Street Journal. I think the reviewer had it exactly right. In this new digital era where corporations and governments are “are attempting to discover exactly what we’re thinking and why. The possibilities are both practical and utopian, thrilling and disturbing.” I found this book easy to read, but at the same time both fascinating and terrifying. Highly recommend for anyone who cares about “our bastion of freedom"

We have been "conditioned" to be mindlessly unconcerned about what we sign, what we agree to and how it impacts our mind set for all of our interactions in our world. Time to pay attention!