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Terminal Man

Terminated my reading experience of this story by Michael Crichton.
The protagonist is a smart but 'out of control' computer geek who has been subjected to a medical experiment designed to modify his behavior.

The irony of the plot centers around the (human) notion that a machine can make smarter decisions to in turn control human behavior.

The device implanted in this engineer's brain is supposed to sense and alter the reactions much like Newton's third law except the algorithm does not exactly play out as designed.

What the humans think is logical and therefore practical proves to be not so. Clearly the machine goes out of control and therefore the tethered human as well resulting in a destructive outcome for all.

While subtle forms of behavior alteration exercises are in daily practice today (think TV; Internet; Places of Worship; AA etc), many of our species do not actually comprehend that they are being exposed to this radiation of thought altering thoughts.

Perhaps some are more susceptible than others for being thoughtless to begin with?

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