Safe if written down? The Leveson Inquiry might beg to differ these days. Image via photobucket.

I grew up slap bang in the middle of the video nasty era, when clever authority types were beginning to suspect that exposing impressionable young minds to lusty scenes of gore and blood spatter might not necessarily be the best way to develop mentally balanced and healthy future generations.

Image via robotsinmasquerade.com.

At eight, the psychological damage one might be doing to an abstract future self is a provocative concept, and I hungrily devoured the works of Graham Masterton, James Herbert and Stephen King, interspersed with more socially acceptable sci-fi novels by Aldous Huxley, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury when my gran came to visit.

Either I don’t have the necessary pathology to become a fully fledged serial killer or I’m just too lazy, but it never happened. But I’m reminded that the much derided Mary Whitehouse and her mates may have had a valid point every time an ‘exciting scientific breakthrough that could change the world’ is announced.

Call it misanthropy, cynicism or indeed exposure to the fictional consequences of innovation, but news this morning that scientists have successfully used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to obtain relevant care information from a patient previously believed to be in a vegetative state, petrified me.

I know it’s positive applications are ground breaking and potentially wonderful, but all I can think about is PreCrime, the thought police and what we did when we figured out how to split the atom.

Oh well. I suppose rampant misanthropy is preferable to serial murder. Although less glamorous.