[lit-ideas] This is your brain on Google - Jul. 21, 2006
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 21:44:46 EDT
_Click here: Future Boy: This is your brain on Google - Jul. 21, 2006_
(http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/21/technology/googlebrain0721.biz2/)
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Surfing the Web with nothing but brainwaves
Kiss your keyboard goodbye: Soon we'll jack our brains directly into the Net
- and that's just the beginning.
(http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2)
By _Chris Taylor_
(http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/21/technology/mailto:ctaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;talkback@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
, Business 2.0 Magazine senior editor
July 24 2006: 11:33 AM EDT
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - -- Two years ago, a quadriplegic man
started playing video games using his brain as a controller. That may just
sound like fun and games for the unfortunate, but really, it spells the
beginning of a radical change in how we interact with computers - and business
will
never be the same.
Someday, keyboards and computer mice will be remembered only as
medieval-style torture devices for the wrists. All work - emails,
spreadsheets, and
Google searches - will be performed by mind control.
If you think that's mind-blowing, try to wrap your head around the
sensational research that's been done on the brain of one Matthew Nagle by
scientists
at Brown University and three other institutions, in collaboration with
Foxborough, Mass.-based company Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems. The
research was published for the first time last week in the British science
journal
Nature.
Nagle, a 26-year-old quadriplegic, was hooked up to a computer via an
implant smaller than an aspirin that sits on top of his brain and reads
electrical
patterns. Using that technology, he learned how to move a cursor around a
screen, play simple games, control a robotic arm, and even - couch potatoes,
prepare to gasp in awe - turn his brain into a TV remote control. All while
chatting amiably with the researchers. He even learned how to perform these
tasks
in less time than the average PC owner spends installing _Microsoft_
(http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=MSFT) (_Charts_
(http://money.cnn.com/quote/chart/chart.html?symb=MSFT) ) Windows.
Decoding the brain
Nagle was able to accomplish all this because the brain has been greatly
demystified in laboratories over the last decade or so. Researchers unlocked
the
brain patterns for thoughts that represent letters of the alphabet as early
as 1999.
Now, Cyberkinetics and a host of other companies are working on turning
those discoveries into real products. Neurodevices - medical devices that
compensate for damage to the brain, nerves, and spinal column - are a $3.4
billion
business that grew 21 percent last year, according to NeuroInsights, a
research and advisory company. There are currently some 300 companies working
in the
field.
But Cyberkinetics is trying to do more than just repair neural damage: It's
working on an implantable chip that Nagle and patients in two other cities
are using to control electronic devices with their minds. (Check out _this
demonstration video_ (http://www.cyberkineticsinc.com/video.htm) ).
Already, the Brown researchers say, this kind of technology can enable a
hooked-up human to write at 15 words a minute - half as fast as the average
person writes by hand. Remember, though, that silicon-based technology
typically
doubles in capacity every two years.
So if improved hardware is all it takes to speed up the device,
Cyberkinetics' chip could be able to process thoughts as fast as speech - 110
to 170
words per minute - by 2012. Imagine issuing commands to a computer as quickly
as
you could talk.
But who would want to get a brain implant if they haven't been struck by a
drastic case of paralysis? Leaving aside the fact that there is a lucrative
market for providing such profoundly life-enhancing products for millions of
paralyzed patients, it may soon not even be necessary to stick a chip inside
your skull to take advantage of this technology.
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Brain-reading technology is improving rapidly. Last year, _Sony_
(http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=SNE) (_Charts_
(http://money.cnn.com/quote/chart/chart.html?symb=SNE) ) took out a patent on
a game system that beams data
directly into the mind without implants. It uses a pulsed ultrasonic signal
that induces sensory experiences such as smells, sounds and images.
And Niels Birbaumer, a neuroscientist at the University of Tuebingen in
Germany, has developed a device that enables disabled people to communicate by
reading their brain waves through the skin, also without implants.
Stu Wolf, one of the top scientists at Darpa, the Pentagon's scientific
research agency which gave birth to the Internet, seriously believes we'll all
be
wearing computers in headbands within 20 years.
By that time, we'll have super fast, super tiny computers that make today's
machines look like typewriters. The desktop will be dead, says Wolf, and the
headband will dominate.
"We already know we can trigger neurons mechanically," he says. "You can
interact directly with the brain without implanted electrodes. Then the next
step is being able to think something and have it happen: Flying a plane,
driving a car, operating household machinery."
Controlling devices with the mind is just the beginning. Next, Wolf
believes, is what he calls "network-enabled telepathy" - instant thought
transfer. In
other words, your thoughts will flow from your brain over the network right
into someone else's brain. If you think instant messaging is addictive, just
wait for instant thinking.
The only issue, Wolf says, is making sure it's consensual; that's a problem
likely to tax the minds of security experts.
But just think of the advantages. In the office of the future, the
conference call, too, will be remembered as a medieval form of torture.
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