Namshubs.
They are mindhacks from the Sumerian culture, neurolinguistic programs that use language as a medium and the human brain as the target. Basically you read them, and they imprint a pattern in your brain. They are designed to create some kind of change in your psyche, and have been a subject of accusation for the Babel. A program, Enki's program to be more specific, was written on a clay tablet (well, what else are you going to use in Mesopotamia?). When people read it, it was in Sumerian, it messed up their linguistic centers. The Sumerian language practically disappeared, and other, very different languages took over. Sumerian was a functional language, the new languages were more abstract. The nam-shubs no longer worked in the new languages.
Neal Stephenson brought out this myth, or rather this collection of myths (the story has been retold in many cultures) in relation to a new language that has become rather widespread. A functional language by all accounts, which is why it might be vulnerable to neurolinguistic programming. To be threatened by this, the potential victim has to understand the language, have it hardwired into their brains. The language must come naturally to the person, to have those linguistic centers open to attacks. This is the case with many programmers. Stephenson used binary as the main example, because it could be displayed as a bitmap - it's just a lot of ones and zeros. Someone fluent in binary could easily interpret the information on a screen and have his mind hacked, while other people would just see white noise. Ones and zeros have been important symbols in history, because binary systems are the easiest to understand. Life and death, the earth and the sky, Heaven and Hell. Thus they offer a plethora of possibilities, and all they need are two different characters. That's why they are perfect for information relay.
But why limit oneself to binary? Sure, knowing the ones and zeros is not that difficult, but it would be impractical to actually learn to read code written in binary. We have artificial operating systems to take care of that, so nobody would have to feed the information to the processors a single bit at a time. Those days are way behind us. Which means binary does not actually have much ground, even among programmers and hackers. It is much easier to write code in C (C# or C++) or XML. Yeah, you could do with Python, Java or Pascal, but those are nowhere near as friendly to the user or the machine. But in all these cases, the commands, the bits of data have a meaning for the programmer/enthusiast/whathaveyou. The person reading it has an understanding how every tiny character works, how it makes a difference. Each of these possible pieces of data have a spot in the person's brain, linking it to other neurons. You might look at an 'if' command, and cheer up. You might look at a 'case' command, and feel warm and fuzzy. That just shows which links you have with the data. But as long as there is an understanding of the data, the basic brain architecture won't be that different. And that means it is hackable.
The brain is basically a computer. The nerves are wires, ganglia are controllers and/or device-specific drivers, the brain itself a motherboard, with gray nuclei working as, well, nuclei, core processors. To use the processors, there has to be input, something that activates the receptors. It could be something a person feels or sees. The signal created is sent to ganglia where the information is relayed to the next neurons. Those take it right up (or down) to the nuclei respective to the type and the location of origin of the input. Then the nuclei process the information. Our thought capabilities enable us to use data we gather in real time and compare it to data received before. In other words, if the input is a script, a bunch of commands to be executed, out nuclei will understand those orders as long as we have them in our memory.
Generally, that will have little to no effect on the mind. That is because the brain is still widely considered to be a mystery. We don't know what out 'Language of Eden' works like, we don't know how information is translated and processed. And that will keep us safe for a few decades at the very least. But the possibility is there, and it sounds pretty intriguing. A chance to reprogram a person to be a genius or a madman, who could pass this up?
At the very least, we might be able to eliminate the need for Harlem Shaking...
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