"Neuro-bubble"

This conversation was overheard in a school, at the height of so called "neuro-bubble", sometime during the latter half of 21st century.

Student A: I heard this time around teachers are going to be rated by "synaptometer" readings of students

Student B: I'm not sure monitoring the incremental change in the number of synapses during a class is an accurate way to rate teachers. Did you attend the class for "Statistical dynamics of evolutionary politics" ?

Student A: Unfortunately yes. My synaptometer reading is way down. I heard infact some of the people in the class had negative synaptometer reading

Student B: What?! Hows that possible?

Student A; A dull lecture, apparently when it crosses the "boreness threshold" can result in unlearning things that you have mastered before. It can stop synaptogenesis altogether and can weaken the existing synapses.

Student B: Thank God ! I was daydreaming in that class. But that unfortunately had resulted in a higher synaptometer reading. Would that result in a better rating for our teacher?

Student A: Wow, thats a neat trick. Not to worry, your synaptometer readings and your grades will be correlated while rating the teacher. So a bad grade and high synaptometer reading will result in a bad rating for the teacher.

Student B: I feel sorry for our teacher though.

Student A: I hear that he is in great demand for "criminal rehabilitation center"

Student B: What?!

Student A: Apparently his services might be valuable for criminals to unlearn some of their crooked tricks which landed them there in the first place.

Student B: Holy shit ! I pity those criminals. They are in for some mind numbing torture.

Student A: Human rights activist can't complaint against it as well. Hence the law enforcers are planning to use his talents, so to speak.

While the synaptometers were highly limited to elitist and academia. It didn't quite evoke the common man's interest. Nevertheless, there was a growing popularity of detectors to quantify and keep track of our emotions. One such instrument was the "Happymeter". Conceived by one of the leading neurobiological engineering company, it measures the levels of serotonin (a neurotransmitter) and a host of other parameters to quantify how happy and contented people are during a period of time. This set off a spurt of start-up companies to develop various instruments and it created what is termed as a "neuro bubble". The bubble didn't last long.

Infact "Happymeter" got so popular that , in a sweeping news, the Dalai Lama, who was quite tech savvy introduced this device in his monastery, claiming that it will guage the progress of his monks. His claim was that it would also provide information about the efficacy of Buddhist meditation techniques.It took about couple of years before the monastery saw a huge reduction in the number of monks. Many monks were suffering from anxiety and stress disorders caused by a frustration that their meditation methods were not producing high enough reading in their instrument. They were just checking it too often to see any significant improvement. Monks running away from a monastery due to stress was quite unheard of, Dalai Lama had no choice but to ban it from its premises.

Rumor has it that, Pope, in a bid to rival the Dalai Lama, tried pushing for a "sinmeter" that keeps track of people's ethical and moral violations. He wanted followers to have this all the time so that they can keep track of their sins. In fact some of the most conservative economist claimed that a "sinmeter" is necessary in the workplace of financial industry, so that people don't make reckless and unscrupulous decisions, which causes periodic economic collapse. Unfortunately none of this took off. The financial industry supposed to fund the idea thought that, a sinmeter could jeopardize their workplace and declined to fund. Rumor has it that even politicians thought that they would be next target for sinmeters and made deliberate attempts to crush the idea altogether.

In fact a research group in a leading university concluded that people are better of without such an instrument. It pointed out that in most cases brain itself had pathways to understand the emotions and react. Any external device causes them to over-react and can lead to potentially catastrophic consequences. That blew the final death knell to all such companies.