Advances like these will rely on signals such as are used in household wireless networking as the most convenient means of communication between the thing in your brain and the outside world. Wireless networking is the facilitator — as well as the menace, when viewed from a security perspective. Cardiac defibrillators and pacemakers, for example, have been shown by security experts to be vulnerable to malicious hacking, though the threat has so far been fortunately largely theoretical. Yet neurosecurity has hitherto merited little attention.

Despite the risks, Kohno said, most new devices aren’t created with security in mind. Neural engineers carefully consider the safety and reliability of new equipment, and neuroethicists focus on whether a new device fits ethical guidelines. But until now, few groups have considered how neural devices might be hijacked to perform unintended actions. This is the first time an academic paper has addressed the topic of "neurosecurity," a term the group coined to describe their field.

In other words, it looks as though the transhumanist era is going to be a Golden Age for CIOs and their skill sets. Even in the case of problems for which CIOs do not have immediate solutions, they will probably be the right people to think about the answers. Take, for example, the extremely vexing problem of neurosecurity. A brain running on a network will obviously be an extremely attractive target for everyone from outright criminals to bored hackers to spammers. Why worry about actually earning a promotion when you can just write a worm that will configure your superior's brain so that the very thought of you triggers his or her pleasure centers?