layout: post title: "Boing Boing: Patent for mind control via TV? (Blipverts!" created: 1059442860 categories:

• Game

This is just like Max Headroom, isn't it? Update: Greg remembered -- they're called "blipverts". In case people don't get the reference, they're the ads that make couch potatoes spontaneously combust.

Patent for mind control via TV? Here's a recent patent on a method to affect a human's nervous system through the electromagnetic field emitted by a TV set:

"Physiological effects have been observed in a human subject in response to stimulation of the skin with weak electromagnetic fields that are pulsed with certain frequencies near 1/2 Hz or 2.4 Hz, such as to excite a sensory resonance. Many computer monitors and TV tubes, when displaying pulsed images, emit pulsed electromagnetic fields of sufficient amplitudes to cause such excitation. It is therefore possible to manipulate the nervous system of a subject by pulsing images displayed on a nearby computer monitor or TV set."