Circumstances

Nita Farahany’s TED talk “When technology can read minds, how will we protect our privacy?” was delivered in 2018 at a so-called Ted Salon event in New York, which features a smaller audience sitting relatively close to the speaker, who stands at a small stage. This provides a more intimate setting than the typical TED stage.

The main circumstances of the speech are the existence of rapidly developing technology for decoding brain data and the non-existence of laws that restrict the use of such technology. This is the technological and legal context that provides the occasion for Farahany’s speech, and she makes frequent references to these circumstances in her speech - focusing especially on the development of the technology, but also bringing up the lack of concrete laws towards the end. 

There is ...