It's altogether possible that you may have no more than barely heard of telenosis—its technical details are among the most closely guarded secrets of our time. So I'll go over some of the high spots of what I told Newell.
Mind you, I'm no authority on the subject, and it has been a full seven years since I have done any research on it. However, I learned all I know from Dr. Homer Reighardt, who, at the time, was the world's outstanding authority.
Telenosis, nowadays, is confined almost exclusively to use in psychiatric hospitals and corrective institutions. It's used chiefly on neurotics. In cases of extreme dementia, it's worthless. In fact, the more normal you are, the more effective the telenosis.
Roughly—without going into any of the real technicalities—it's this way:
Science has known for a long time that electrical waves emanate from the brain. The waves can be measured on an electroencaphalograph, and vary with the physiological and psychological condition of the individual. Extreme paranoia, for example, or epilepsy, or alcoholism are accompanied by violent disturbances of the waves.
Very interesting, but....
It wasn't until 2037 that Professor Martin James decided that these brain waves are comparable to radio waves, and got busy inventing a device to listen in on them.
The result, of course, was telenosis. The machine that James came up with, after twenty years of work, could not only listen in on a person's thoughts, which are carried on the brain waves, but it could transmit messages to the brain from the outside.
"Unless the waves are in a state of disturbance caused by alcohol or insanity or some such thing?" Newell commented.