Keeping thoughts to myself

OPINION: It's well-known among my family, friends and workmates that I often suffer from an inability to filter my thoughts as they move from brain to mouth, writes Jillian Allison-Aitken in this week's Online.

Actually, suffer is probably not the correct word to use there, since it's usually the poor sucker taking part in the conversation with me who suffers from my unfiltered mutterings as I merrily chuck out all manner of disturbing thoughts.

Now the geek world is all a-buzz with talk of mind-reading computers and it's got me worried. Probably not as worried as my family, friends and workmates, though.

At the annual CeBIT geek-fest last week, devices were on show that allow users to write letters or play pinball using just the power of their brains (http://is.gd/a4YT0). Yes, little machines with electrodes that monitor your brain waves. Resistance is futile.

I know I happily ramble on here in my wee corner of The Southland Times about Tasers, Barry Manilow torture and George Clooney but, trust me, you are getting a filtered version. I re-read what I've written before sending my column off to our unsuspecting news editor and remove all manner of things.

Then, one of those poor, long-suffering sub-editors has the misfortune of refiltering my filtered thoughts.

It's all very technical, you know.

Can you imagine the stuff I leave unsaid? Do you want to imagine it? I like to think I'm improving as I get older but it might just be that my old brain doesn't remember all the inappropriate items I converse about.

And I don't need some smart-arse computer finding the very rare thought that I realised wasn't fit for public consumption and sharing it with the world (or whoever I happen to be fantasising about Tasering at the time. Bosses don't need to be traumatised like that).

Taking it all a step further, toy-maker Mattel has come up with a special dog tag that sends signals to a USB receiver, which updates the dog's Twitter page (http://is.gd/a5mOo). Because all dogs have Twitter accounts, don't they?

It was bad enough that Sockington the cat signed up to Twitter (http://twitter.com/Sockington), but do we really need a dog sharing his innermost thoughts?

I used to own a dog (named Boof because he was as dumb as a stick and "boof" was the sound he regularly made as he walked into doors, got his head stuck in the cat door and fell over trying to avoid sitting on the cat) and I'm pretty sure his Tweets would have consisted of "who put that wall there?" and "food, yay, I haven't eaten for days".

And I think it's safer if I don't know what Seymour the Wonder Cat's thinking.

» Jillian Allison-Aitken is a senior staff member at The Southland Times and was named best internet and communications technology columnist at the 2008 Qantas Awards.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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