It looks like Nintendo isn t the only Japanese company looking to use the remote control to bend the collective wills of mankind to their bidding. NTT, Japan s main telephone company, has created a remote prototype that can control people. I shit you not.

To work the intended victim, I mean volunteer has to slip a headset over their skull. The remote than tells the headset when and how to tramsit low voltage electic current from the back of a person s ears through their head. Although in its very early stages, the device seems to work. Just ask the AP writer who had it tested out on him.

I found the experience unnerving and exhausting: I sought to step straight ahead but kept careening from side to side. Those alternating currents literally threw me off. The technology is called galvanic vestibular stimulation essentially, electricity messes with the delicate nerves inside the ear that help maintain balance. I felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right. I was convinced mistakenly that this was the only way to maintain my balance. The phenomenon is painless but dramatic. Your feet start to move before you know it. I could even remote-control myself by taking the switch into my own hands. There s no proven-beyond-a-doubt explanation yet as to why people start veering when electricity hits their ear. But NTT researchers say they were able to make a person walk along a route in the shape of a giant pretzel using this technique. It s a mesmerizing sensation similar to being drunk or melting into sleep under the influence of anesthesia. But it s more definitive, as though an invisible hand were reaching inside your brain.

You know what s coming next. That s right, NTT says they think that their brain-tampering, body-controlling device could be used in video games.

The AP test dummy strapped on the headset and watched a racing car game while it sent pulses through his brain. She said it accentuated the turns the car was making and pumped up the realism.

I think Nintendo needs to look up NTT and start talking about turning their remote controller into a truly revolutionary experience.

A Remote Control for Humans [AP]

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