headsets that pick up your thoughts

The BBC news item about headsets you can wear that pick up your brainwaves and allow you to manipulate some kind of machinery via a wireless link are the first step to the nanoparticles inside Alister.
Shrinking these sensors down by  bioengineering  organo-synthetic nanoparticles that can collectively generate a signal is a logical next step.
You may think this is all pretty far fetched but the truth is that we are already victims of the reckless use of nanomaterials in all kinds of manufactured stuff we handle.
Developing technologies that start to control the kinds of nanomaterials manufactured for direct human absorption and controlling how we are dosed up with them isn't far behind. We are already seeing research into the application of nanomedicines. You can read all about these developments in Nanomedicine

The article How Nanoparticles Enter the Human Body and Their Effects There (nanotrust dossier 003 November 2010. Published by the Institute of Technology Assessment of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, gives a very readable account of the reality of how easy it is to get nanoparticles in the human body

Here's a cut-n-paste of the introduction paragraph (My italics)
"Nanotechnology and the respective nanomaterials are employed in the research sector and also contained in many commercially available products. This means that the general public is currently being exposed to nanomaterials. This raises the question whether such materials enter the human body and whether they can trigger health effects. The potential health risks are poorly investigated. A number of studies have reported that free nanoparticles, due to their small size, can penetrate into the finest lung structures by breathing, can cause inflammatory reactions, and subsequently can enter the bloodstream. The circulatory system distributes such particles throughout the body, where they can enter other organs. Nanoparticles can also be actively or passively incorporated in cells, and harmful effects cannot be excluded. The biological effects are not based on chemical composition alone: size, shape, surface texture, aggregation state and surface charge also play an important role. The present dossier examines the potential entry sites of nanoparticles into the human body and describes several biological effects which can be triggered"


Image below from nanomedicine.