I must be getting seriously old if the authorities call for something to be banned as “a danger to society” … and I have never heard of the existence of this “danger to society”.

This is not some designer drug. Or something cooked up in a still.

It’s a fairly old music system known as binaural beats that some have termed “digital drugs”.

And an official with the Dubai police has called for binaural beats to be treated “like cannabis and ecstasy”.

A couple of thoughts on this:

First, can anything spur the growth of something potentially dangerous — but interesting/mind-expanding — as threatening to make it illegal? I would assume that I was not, until today, the only person in the UAE absolutely clueless about “digital drugs”. Before The National published this story.

Second, thinking about this … the idea that music can summon up emotions, reminded me of a plot line in Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation trilogy.

One of the primary characters, a mutant named The Mule, is able to play a musical device Asimov calls a “Visi-sonor” … which normally seems to induce vivid and pleasant sensations to those listening but, in the wrong hands (like The Mule’s) can kill people.

In The National’s story, the writer notes that “a U.S. company, I-Doser, has tracks on its website with names such as cocaine, opium and peyote that can be bought for US$3.25 … each. The website is not blocked.

“The company also produces tracks that purportedly simulate orgasms, and others claim to take listeners to the ‘gates of hell’.”

For the “gates of hell”, I assume something like raw Nickelback might be channeled into a victim’s brain. Which reminds me … the Canadian band will be playing in Abu Dhabi during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend in early November. (Note to self: Avoid the track.)

Anyway, this is an interesting concept … the idea that weird music can finagle a brain into changing moods … and the notion that it’s dangerous and we need to limit its consumption.

I assume “the kids” will let us know how this turns out. We have been worrying a long time about how music might influence precocious young minds — witness the concern of Elvis Presley and rock-n-roll, etc.

Turns out, the biggest threat seems to be to a person’s long-term hearing ability, more than losing their minds or wasting their time in some blissed out/gates of hell state.