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There is a provocative article today about the use of new airport screening machines that can visualize with great detail what people look like under their clothes. The machines are being ushered into airports with urgency after the recently attempted terror attack on Christmas eve.
The idea of machines that take naked pictures of airline travelers is a titillating idea, of course, and images of randy airport screeners ogling naked people springs to mind. What is harder to bring to mind, of course, is the effect of the hidden brain on this process. Humans have an extraordinary ability to adapt to their circumstances — the tenth cookie does not taste as sweet as the first, the 16th cigarette of the day pales in its effect compared to the first, the 90th week in a wheelchair is not as painful as the tenth, and so on. This phenomenon of diminishing returns is sometimes called a hedonic treadmill — you run and run, but never make as much forward progress as your first step onto the treadmill. (This is part of the reason people make dreadful errors in forecasting their future happinesses and unhappinesses — we mistakenly assume the way we feel in the first moment we experience something is the way we will feel about that thing after ten years.)
I have no quibble with the very real debate between privacy and security. But the risk of voyeurism shouldn’t occupy our fears. It’s the risk of boredom among airport screeners that is the much greater concern, in terms of how the mind works. I don’t care if the airline passengers are Hollywood’s most glamorous stars — having to watch a thousand naked stars a day would make even a voyeur’s eyes glaze over.
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