I had an idea a few years ago: how cool would it be to have some sort of machine that would read my brainwaves and translate them into music? “Very cool!” was the response, and so I promptly began to muse over how great it would be actually to have one of these devices. The idea gradually evolved into something slightly more complicated; perhaps the machine could read and translate not only my brainwaves, but also other forms of bio-feedback, including pulse, hormonal levels, temperature, conductivity of the skin, bodily movement and et cetera. Eventually though, I wound up abandoning it as too farfetched to see any time soon. But it would seem that I may have been too hasty. If you google “neurofeedback device”, you’ll find a number of links to pages describing mechanisms that scan and interpret brainwaves in a manner not unlike my idea above. As far as I know, none of them churn out music, but I can’t imagine it’s too far down the line. After all, all you’d need to do is stick a neurologist in a room with a midi programmer, and viola. One brainwave-into-music translator. No more need to spend half my life learning the fine art of musical composition. And no more need to spend weeks or months toiling over a musical score until it's just right. Now everything will be handled automatically—and perfectly—by the new technology. The human race will have risen to new heights, having improved upon the primitive process of manual artisanship.
Yet there’s more to producing an expressive work than obtaining the final product. The very act of creation is a journey unto itself, yielding great spiritual rewards. When an artist works, he calls upon his creative genius and places himself into direct contact with The Source of All Solutions. He constructs his mind and soul from the ground up by inventing new ways, his ways, to cope with the world around him. Accordingly, he is his own master, a juggernaut of character and adamantine self-esteem. Will artists of the future trade this for the convenience of having something that amounts to little more than a brainwave printout? 
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Sure they will. Technological progress like this is absolutely inevitable, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going lose anything or fall out of touch with creativity. After all, have modern composers called it quits in light of computer-based composition software? Of course they haven’t; if anything, we can say that there are now more avenues available, more possibilities for creative exploration. Similarly, painters are still at it, even though photography has existed for decades upon decades. And, despite the fact that we have bicycles, cars, trains and planes, people still use their legs and feet to walk around.
The tendency of life is to become increasingly customized. Knowledge continues to leap forward in all of its many directions, and it provides us with more and more options, carving ever finer niches into the world. Perhaps someday there will be a perfect niche constructed for each and every individual on the planet! Everyone will be able to go through life provided fully with not only the resources needed in order to grow, but also a clearly defined avenue to traverse in pursuit of that growth. And how does the brain-wave translation technology fit into this picture? It will provide an as-of-yet unavailable set of tools for artists whose medium is not music, not illustration, not the spoken word, but thoughts themselves. Humanity will see a new era of Sourcers—those who think, reason, interpret, feel, understand, imagine, anticipate and project in manners that are fundamentally different from those of their predecessors and contemporaries. And, thanks to the increased speed at which our world is now developing, we may actually live to see it. --Reconsiderate
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