Slashdot Mirror
Linking Hardware To Wetware
Vikki_R. writes: "Wired has an article about grafting a microelectric circuit directly onto a human brain cell. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have been working on developing an interface between semiconductors and neurons. Imagine being able to give your computer a piece of your mind ..." Update: 11/25 22:54 GMT by T : Here's an earlier post linking to a different article on the same research.
When can I plug in to the Matrix?
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
I am cuter than you.
I seriously doubt that!
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
I suspect by the time they have this issue sufficiently researched and tested, wireless connections will be pretty much commonplace over much of the world. Imagine being able to THINK of something and have relevant information directly IN your brain. No more going to the library (does anyone ever do that anymore? It's all I had growing up!), no more 'surfing the web' to find information. It'll all just be THERE - ready for mental ingestion without physically having to DO much work.
:/
I also think about how this will be abused - IM and 'wireless' ads are two that come to mind. Billboards and ads are annoying enough, but you can turn off the TV/Radio, or close your eyes, or look at something else. Imagine NEVER being able to get away from this stuff - mentally, I mean. It'd be pumped into your brain directly - those stupid human body filters like your eyes, feet, etc. won't be able to stop those ads from embedding themselves into your brain...
I know, it's all farfetched, and I kind doubt I'll see widespread adoption of this in my lifetime. But for any possible UPSIDE of this, I see way too many downsides.
creation science book
If slashdot editors actually read slashdot:
Nerve Cells Connected to Semi-Conductors
--Blair
"I won't expect Wired editors ever to be that clueful."
Imagine teaching you brain stuff directly into neurons .. you simply know it. The Matrix all over =) ..
dd if=/tmp/Alan_Cox_kernel_hacking.img of=/dev/brain
Jon - TheSpork
I don't think giving it another piece would help this any.... :D
I don't think this will be like installing a RAM upgrade in your head. More like hooking the existing computer (your brain) up to another over some Cat5. If the new system crashes, you have to reboot it, but it won't affect the original. It would certainly suck when that happened, though. It be like a temporary lobotomy; it's over once the add-on reboots, but until then you're limited to your own grey matter.
Dyolf Knip
Just think if we has the same level (or more) interface with a computer has they do with each other, imagine how easy it would be to hack boxes.
the slow part of hacking system would be your interface to it, and bottle necks in there (eg keyboard) i never tried my self, but imagine a good original hack requires a lot of prep work, eg writing tools, poking into your tcp/ip and stuff.
and during the actual hack you dont have time to make quick changes, probably need to abort write your tools some more and start again.
where as with this you could hack stuff like, with the full utility of your human ingenuity, instinks , imagination etc
not only that, as well as hacking other machines we could try hack into each other, with the strong of mind or skill winning.
just imagine what future version of script kiddies would do with their parents, if they didn't like being sent to bed w/o supper.
did any one see that 'Outer Limits' episode where every one bar a few with brain disorders. had a live net connection to their brains, and they all got a virus. It was upto the few w/o the link to try save the others from crainial overload.
-Trevelyan
This software may not be used to control aircraft, nuclear power plants, or anybody's mind.
although I still believe it's a long way off, being able to interact at the protein, and possibly even bio-electric level with opens up some great doors for being able combat a wide variety of cellular problems. Think directly shutting down cancer cells, or changing telomerase lengths to increase lifespan. Maybe even finding a way of increasing the speed of biochemical reactions and electrical signaling in the mind (overclock your brain on the next Geraldo)... but seriously:
IMO there are still some major hurdles to be lept in the development, e.g. Finding a stable power supply for these semiconductors so they can operate for any period of time. Sure, we can just say, let us leech some bioelectricity from surrounding tissue, or maybe convert sugar like muscles, but there's the actuality of doing it, versus the simplicity of saying it.
Plus, if we need widespread modification of a large body of tissue, and we plan on doing it with an injection of a foreign body in the bloodstream or otherwise, you've still got to contend with the body's own immune system, and possible toxic reactions from breakdowns of semiconductors and their binding materials.
So fear not, your brain probably won't suffer from a cataclysmic BSOD or fsck from hell for a few years yet.
So, besides my "what ifs" above, I think this is a good thing.
Which is why I said I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime. Even if I live a long time, I probably don't have more than 50-60 years left(!), so I think I was pretty conservative in my estimate.
creation science book
Ever want a harddrive hooked up to your brain? That whole memorization thing becomes irrelevant. First, of course, you need an interface.
Next thing you know, we'll end up with a world like in Johnny Mnemonic or something... 80 gigs, right in the head. Of course, by the time people have computers in their brains, storage capacities will be much higher than that.
And then you'll get things like people getting a new sort of amnesia where the computer malfunctioned and erased data inside the person's head... or if there's built-in networking, crackers will get directly into people's brains and put memories there that never took place, or they'll record your thoughts for their personal use.
Will you need a firewall inside your brain? How about virus protection software? A computer inside your head, especially one with network connectivity, will give new meaning to the term "virus" as it applies to humans.
Maybe the government wants to install computers in every person's head for thought policing, er, convenience reasons. Then, cool hacks will appear on the net allowing you to shield your thoughts from the government, while making artificial legitimate thoughts appear on the networking interface for the government to see. Then, the government will pass all sorts of anti-terrorism laws against modifying the computer in your brain. And they'll come up with monitoring software capable of determining if you have modified the software in your brain's computer.
Of course, there will be failures of some sort or another, and people will become delusional or they'll simply lose control of themselves because of an illegal instruction fault (while upgrading their firmware, er, brainware) and start flopping around or something. This brings new meaning to debugging.
In short, whatever possibilities a computer inside your brain makes possible, it's nothing when compared to the disadvantages. OH WELL.
Invasive (ie where you have to cut tissue open) interfaces are bad because it is basically an open wound that is open to infection; also, any foreign materials (wires etc.) inside the body will be attacked by the normal defence mechanisms.
This has been countered somewhat by materials with low bioreactivity (I don't know too much about that) but still there is the problem of the open wound.
One option would be to have the interface under the skin and the information transmitted via a coil (like the bionic ear, pioneered by those cool aussies at cochlear).
Another option is to induce a current directly in nerves without placing anything inside the body at all; I *think* its called functional electrostimulation. Its the kind of thing that is useful for paraplegics of all sorts, and centres around regaining the use of existing limbs that have had their nerve control damaged or broken in some way.
Moo.
...Michael Colicos, the guy over at qflux.net, has been working on something similar in his day job; in fact, his work will be on the cover of the Novebmer 30 issue of Cell (probably the most pristigous biology journal).
Colicos also has a series of "virtual intelligence" programs and screensavers (win32 only, unfortunately) that do some interesting stuff.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
Are you serious? You actually think that humans could possible build a machine that could decode thoughts realtime from brain impulses?
At the moment it's a massively nontrivial task to tell if monkeys are looking at black or white. Do you think a computer (no matter how much people idolise the things) could tell the difference between two basic thoughts? For a start you'd have to interface to some massive fraction of the number of nerve cells, then you'd have to get all this data to a huge computer somewhere and have it analysed. And for what? The best way to find out what someone is thinking is to just ask them. There'll never be a computer that can read peoples' minds anywhere near as well as a good trial lawyer who's trained to study faces.
... they remember to mount a scratch monkey.
Gimme a break. /.'s Groupthink is really annoying. I really DO wish the editors payed a ttention to stuff that's been posted before.
Overclock !?!
.....
where do you put the cooling fan ?
Propeller Head takes on a whole new Meaning
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
That statement, sir, fits into a long line of similar statements. From da Vinci saying that we will never travel to the moon to all too recent claims that cloning humans is impossible. I am not saying that it will occur in my lifetime or yours. Several things hover on that "ten years" away mark for a century, and then happen. The next day, nobody thinks that it's extraordinary. I have no idea how many interveing technologies will have to be developed, or even what a "machine" of that era will look like... or what will be considered a human mind. But to say that humans cannot achieve a thing has been consistantly contradicted by slow but punctuated technological progress.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
One of the goals of pushing the technological envelope is to remove and overcome bottlenecks to any process. We have seen bottlenecks overcome in the past. One example is punch cards. Having to point and click or type is just another bottleneck that will eventually be alleviated.
The merging of humans and computers has been a process long in the making. Computers operate in binary and humans operate in a complex visual world. The original computers had to be operated bit by bit. Eventually command-line made it to the scene. Then GUI's made an appearance. Then VR was realized. There aren't too many steps left to place interaction directly to the brain level.
I only have one major fear about it. The brain has thus far been a closed system. We don't really know how vulnerable it is. It might sound crazy, but I don't think it entirely impossible that we will find that a brain is easily controlled or exploited once a link is established.
Of course, that is my opinion founded in pure hypothetical so it must be taken completely at a casual value as such.
Hate to say it, but SDRam has the same problem. Whenever you read the stuff, you have to write it back again ;)
Not to mention refreshes...
Rod Taylor
Hmm.. other people doing my bidding?
Someone prepare the hot grits!
Rod Taylor
Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon 26 Nov 11:26 AM
from the neener-neener dept.
FrickinIdiot writes: Slashdot is reporting on a new Microsoft worm (big surprise). A new unnamed worm has been released and, once again, Microsoft software is the target. More specifically, this new worm targets Microsoft SQL servers with no administrator passwords set. Once the server is infected, it logs onto Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers and is ready to receive commands and act accordingly. What I thnk is anyone still using Microsoft software desrves what they get.
( Read More... 70 of 269 comments )
Yes, folks, this is an actual Slashdot headline from tomorrow! Note the clues: Lack of respect for users of Microsoft software, direct cut-n-paste from the submitted article without attribution, small typos in the editorial comments and of course a total lack of knowledge about what was posted the day before on the front page.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I'm sorry, but between the Linux vm system fiasco and a few issues not that long ago I won't touch Linux 2.4 series with a 10 foot poll for my computer -- sure ain't shoving it into my head.
I'm thinking OpenBSD for this one. Very few serious issues and half descent out of the box security.
Grandma will run windows and will always wonder why shes broadcasting her recipes to all her friends on her Brainmail client.
Rod Taylor
Gives Blue Screen of Death a whole new meaning.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
haha.. Parents will turn that on. All the kids in school will go around say BEEP this and BEEP that -- using actual beeps just like their parents do.
Of course, that just means the word BEEP will become the new bad word a few decades from then. We can eliminate the entire language one word at a time this way...
Rod Taylor
Do you think a computer (no matter how much people idolise the things) could tell the difference between two basic thoughts? For a start you'd have to interface to some massive fraction of the number of nerve cells, then you'd have to get all this data to a huge computer somewhere and have it analysed. And for what? The best way to find out what someone is thinking is to just ask them. There'll never be a computer that can read peoples' minds anywhere near as well as a good trial lawyer who's trained to study faces.
I appreciate your attempt to reign in wild speculators who think mind-reading is as easy as sticking a wire in the brain, but "never" is a long time. If Moore's Law continues and noninvasive scanning technologies continue to improve at the rate they have for the last century, then the technology for this might be available next century, or even this century. Or genetic engineering might have the capability to plant a large number of noninjurious artificial probes.
What's much harder than the collection is the data analysis. We still don't really have much of a grasp on a scientific level of what consciousness is or what thoughts are. What's more, the data so far concerning machines that try to allow the handicapped to write via brain waves indicate that the brain's state is extremely variable from hour to hour, so that the same signal patterns don't recur even when the person is having what they think is the same thought. I have a feeling we will only begin to make substantial progress in consciousness research once we create the necessary data collection technologies, and even then it may be decades or more before the problem is solved to the extent that, say, the human genome is now.
On the other hand, simple affectors and effectors are certainly a much easier problem than global mind-reading or the direct absorption of information. When the first generally useful neural interfaces become available, they'll probably function a lot like a modern head-mounted computer with speech recognition. There will be a virtual screen with translucent overlay of the visual field, a way to speak into the system while not speaking aloud, and some way to point on the screen. This is probably not more than two or three decades away. The question is what it will be good for, since the same technology in an external form through wired glasses, a miniature microphone, gesture recognition wristwatch or ring, and tiny personal computer will all be available without surgery or bioengineering. Privacy in public spaces is the only major advantage that comes to mind.
Tim
...that is, until someone cracks into you and stops your heart. Then it sucks tremendously.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Humans rely on memory a lot, day to day, but also things like being a witness in court. As so many things become easy to forge (photos, recorded voices etc), are we in danger of losing our legal system?
If all physical evidence can be faked, and all mental evidence can be faked, are we left with anything?
Oh. Yeah. Wish I noticed that before I replied. I feel like a moron.
:)
The technology being discussed in this article is probably going to be doing usefull things a long time before 50-60 years from now, it just won't be accessing memory. It might be used in prosthetics or research comparatively quickly.
I don't know if they're able to put these dots in living people (I doubt it) so the insanely promising concept for the near future would be research in biological computing, just like the article describes. Again, by near future I just mean less than 50 years
Anyway. Interesting points.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I just finished Diamond Age about 5 minutes ago. Go read it. NOW.
The reason I say this is because in this masterpiece work by Neal Stephenson, one of the focuses of the book is on a society of 'Drummers', a group of people connected with wetware. They have nanosites circulating in their bloodstream, and they use the hosts' brain in... well... I would tell you, but it's kinda a major plot element. Go read this book.
P.S.: I would pay large amounts of money to be able to do what mgkimsal2 says. (without the ads, of course.
---
Security issues aside, having a networked brain and the capacity to access an unlimited wealth of information is surely my wettest dream. However, getting from the point of attaching neurons to computer circuits to the point of downloading knowledge a la the Matrix ("Now I know how to fly a huey, yahoo!") is a much harder problem.
The human brain 1) develops over many many years and throughout that time develops patterns unique to the individual's experiences; and 2) it develops in relation to a body via which it interacts with the world. This is why so much CogSci research focuses on the issue of "embodiment". The paradigm of brain as discursive controller is fading away in favor an emphasis on the role of the physical (both body and environment) in what we typically regard as cognition. (See Being There by Andy Clark for an amazing read).
Given this, knowledge, especially knowledge that manifests in physical behavior, must either be "installed" in a manner highly sensitive to the idiosyncracies of the person, or through a long period in which the body and brain are trained to work together on a problem. Therefore, I don't think it's all that plausible to instantaneously know how to fly a huey, to drive a car, to type, etc.. As someone else observed, we'll see this technology used in prosthetics far sooner than we'll have Matrix/Johny Mnemonic style scenarios.
Imagine being able to give your mind a piece of of your computer.
Read "The Peace War" - Vernor Vinge
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
It is fascinating how biotechnology (e.g., cloning, stem cells, etc) is racing toward replacing body parts while strictly mechanical solutions are racing toward the same goal (e.g., self contained heart, silicon/neural interfaces). Unlike clockwork hearts vs biological replacements where the biological replacement is without doubt the ultimate fix, silicon enhancements of the brain offer possibilities that natural neuron solutions cannot achieve such as 100% precision for mathematical calculations at high speed.
Gives silicon augmentation a new meaning. People will start looking for small scars under the ears and hairline for proof that someone's intelligence is not "natural."
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
One technique that could be used is an artificial neural net that is trained to be a transducer between wetspace and chipspace. This NN would sit between the microchip and the neural interface, translating signals to and from the two domains.
The only thing that would be left to do is to train your own brain (learn, basically) to interface with the chip. This might be difficult, or it might be easy. Biofeedback is actually a very good technique and it could be used in this arena as well.
I wonder what the first true brain/chip interface would do. I have a lot of trouble putting names to faces I've only met a few times. It would be nice to look at a face, and suddenly be aware of the name because my little computer looked it up for me.
I can think of plenty other applications. You could do evil-complex math in your head, or visualize anything you want with total realism (ok, maybe some people might abuse that ;) What else?
Just so long as it doesn't run a Microsoft OS. A Blue Screen of Death is something I would SURELY want to avoid!!!
--Experience is what you get when you are expecting something else--
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
Connecting to the brain has two applications:
1. Input
2. Output
Unless we figure out how to format information for usable presentation to the brain, or understand brain output with more bandwidth than morse code, "jacking in" won't be worth much.
The Neurophone bypasses the afferent mechanics of the middle ear, but really seems to have just stimulated the afferent mechanics of the cochlea, so it's not so much a "neuro" phone as a possible eardrum replacement. I'd put up a link, but they're mostly naff, either trying to profit from the quackery aspects of the device, or failing to understand the device when ragging on it.
Experiments with occipital lobe array implants are much more promising.
Efferent studies so far involve biofeedback and using biofeedback to move a mouse. Here at are some links. But like I said, this technology is about as exciting as an omelette bar at a rodeo.
--Blair
And think of the possibilities for case modding!
(Seriously - when my body wears out, I'd love to have my brain implanted in a robot. Rad-harden the thing, graft on some controls for an ion engine, throw some glucose-producing plants into a hollow dome, and fire me into space, baby! I'm gonna tour the Solar System even if it's the last thing I do!)