Slashdot Mirror
NASA Develops Tech To Hear Words Not Yet Spoken
alex_guy_CA writes "Yahoo News has a story about technology that comes close to reading thoughts not yet spoken, by analyzing nerve commands to the throat. 'A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly it cannot be heard, but the tongue and vocal cords do receive speech signals from the brain,' said developer Chuck Jorgensen, of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. Jorgensen's team found that sensors under the chin and one each side of the Adam's apple pick up the brain's commands to the speech organs, allowing the subauditory, or 'silent speech' to be captured. The story indicates the method could be useful on space missions or other difficult working conditions."
Wow! Combine this with a transmitter and receiver, and you get the ability to have sub-vocal backchannel communication with people--I think it was Gregory Benford who wrote a series of books that featured something like this.
Way better than text messaging.
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
...that system Ender used to talk to Jane? That would be sooo cool. (Now, all I need is an omniscient AI with root access on every machine connected to the Internet...)
I mean - there are a lot of things that I *think* about some of my coworkers, especially during meetings, but I always am able to catch myself right before I say anything. You'd *really* have to watch yourself plugged into that thing!
No way this could be used for anti-terrorism surveillance...
I have been pwned because my
Isn't that lip-reading technology we had on that Jupiter mission three years ago good enough?
....they can hear you scream in space.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
been there done that
MoFscker
What I don't quite understand, and the article doesn't make clear; is this thing essentially reading what you're verbally thinking? :/
Or is it just intercepting those nerve signals which you use to inaudibly mumble to yourself with?
If the first is true, then wow, imagine just thinking to your computer and it doing it.
If the second is true then I don't really see what's so great about it
Reminds me of the article, Mind Over Machine, which was previously posted on /.
I personally am incredibly excited about these kinds of developments and can only wait in anticipation for the real-world actualization of this research.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
Now I'll have to break out some more aluminium and extend the tinfoil hat into a full-face helmet.
I wonder if this could benefit Stephen Hawking? Good thing he's got friends at NASA. ;)
The title implies that this technology could predict speech before it is said, but the article explains that it can simply read people's conscious thoughts as they are occurring. Those seem to be two completely different things to me.
This could potentially take a lie detector to a new level - people are likely going to think over their possible responses before replying, and this could be used to obtain those thoughts. Scary.
INTERROGATOR: "I'll ask you once more - Did you kill Mrs. Finkelstein?"
PRISONER: "..."
INTERROGATOR: "Aha! And where did you hide her body?"
<<.. wow .. this device feels kinda neat ... ooooh .. tingly on my adenoids there ... i wonder if it's working ... it would be so cool if it did .. i always dreamed of this as a kid .. oh my god being a kid was great .. i wish i could hug my dad again ..>>
No, these damn things simply DON'T WORK!!
combine this technology with cell phones and a hands free headset, so that inconsiderate jerks can yammer on their cellphone all day long in theatres without pissing anyone else off.
Wasn't there a technology similar to this posted on slashdot a couple months back? A cell phone that read the jaw/throat muscle movements and vibrations to clear up speech in noisy environments?
Space travel is trivial in comparison.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Hook it up to a speaker and you'll be able to have an inner monologue voice over everywhere you go..
That and theme music would be great...
Seems to me this could *create* some difficult working conditions.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
I could use this in so many situations. I can't name the amount of times I've said something I shouldn't have.
Nevermind combining this with a microphone or whatever, combine it with an electric pulse attached to my ass so it can stop me from saying stuff that ends up getting me into trouble!
--
The last digit of pi is four.
Guys, no matter how geeky and nerdy you want to be, NEVER TAKE THIS INVENTION ON A DATE!
but it'll probably be years before we see it commercially.
Imagine using voice commands to control your computer remotely - you're on a croweded bus, using your cell phone to connect to your house computer, telling it subvocally to turn on the airconditioning in time for when you get home, to turn on the coffee maker and download some work from the office and a movie for later. And no one hears anything, and the only thing they can see moving is your throat. What about dictating a letter on your way home, or other documents?
What about secret service agents? Or the military? No more needing to talk into their sleeves or using noisy radio to give away their position. You could have the conversation turn up on a pda screen, or have an artifical voice piped into ear phones. How cool would that be?
I'm sure there's lots more stuff you could use this for that I haven't even thought of yet, but I'm betting it is still years away.
tinfoil making a new beenie to protect me from RR/Carnivore.. Now I have to run out and buy some more to wrap around my neck!
:-(
Crap......
Better start practicing singing a song in your head to block out the thought police. "Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow..."
"Good morning, boss (you clueless moron). What (boring and useless) work have we (pitiful understaffed few) got on the agenda for today (and the rest or our meaningless lives)?"
"I'm not feeling well (I need a beer to numb my brain after working for you all day). Can I go home (pub crawling) early?"
I was going to write a comment, but I'm sure those bastards at NASA already know what I was going to say.
I have a feeling that this is going to get modded to hell, but eh..
mnmn is right.. nasa's priorities have been out of whack for a while. working on these advanced technologies, while noble, shouldnt be the thrust of the research of the organization designed and forged under the premise of space exploration and investigation. Leave this stuff to the colleges and private sector, and build us a nifty spacamajigger.
I'm a little tea pot.
This is not new. Prosthetic hands that operate on nerve signals have been available for decades.
The reason I started reading slashdot was because it was fairly spin free. I guess I am better off reading the AIT Times. It sure has its faults, but it is spin free.
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
Sports cheating: communicate perfectly to coach when you are not supposed to.
Croc Hunter: sneak up on animals in the wild to research, etc, and communicate with team and not startle animals.
Porn: somehow... someway...
Government: give tech 20 more years and when these signals can be picked up remotely, let FBI tap the signals without a court order because, hey, there is a War On Terror(TM) to fight.
Interrorgation: capture truth someone would have wanted/started to say but then held their tounge at the last second.
Slashdot: this tech + reconition to text + scripting = best chance at first post. Just think about BSD dying, and it's dead!
Finally I could talk on my cell in the library/classroom/theatre.
If people could hear all the things I say to myself, everyone would think I was insane. I don't want to be locked up for saying something I didn't want anyone to hear.
For instance, you're more likely to simply pick a quarter off the floor than to say, "I am going to pick this quarter off the floor." Whereas, you're very likely to think the sentence, "I should buy some wine on my way home from the market" if that's part of your plans.
Seems to me that this technology could, in short order, discern the verbal sentences we fashion for ourselves as part of our daily thinking. But it won't ever pick up on the million thoughts we have each day that aren't based on words.
If this technology gets deployed, society will have to learn in short order that not every thought is legitimate. My verbalizing the thought to myself, "I am Napoleon" does not necessarily mean that I think I am Napoleon.
One last thought. If we get widespread, cheap deployment of this technology, it will have as big an effect on our lives as the World Wide Web.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Your post was equaly as pithy for your parent as to the post below it. Take a bow, Sir. Take a bow.
as I got half-ways through reading the article I got curious... sure enough, if you take a finger (or 2) and stick them under your throat you can feel it contracting slightly... just when reading. so now the question is: does it happen while I'm typing too, and the answer is YES... I actually spell out my words, and say my punctuation, while typing.
reminds me of this toy (was it a "transformers" toy?) I had when I was a kid. you'd basically talk into this tube (without talking... just form your words) and it'd make the sounds. I guess it worked on pressure differences or something... kids get crappy toys now
Jeremy Logan's Website.
"He's alright I guess."
"Ha! That's NOT what you where GONNA say!"
;-)
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
No more talking about scientists under your breath....
It will make a perfect tool for interrogate those evil terrorists and other citizens.
There you are, staring at me again.
Wow, finally when someone says that they hear voices in their head, they can prove it!
I'm just going...out to....stalk....Lenny and...Carl......
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Most (all?) people actually "speak" when they think in words. This is most observable while reading.
When you think (or read) "banana" your brain creates the same signals (but at lower magnitude) as if you would say it. Your tongue actually moves while your reading. Experiments with mute people have shown that they actually move their hands slightly, as if they were forming the words, they read, in sign-language.
This technology does not read your thoughts, but the signals send to your vocal system. As it catches the signals before they reach the vocal system, it reads "words not yet spoken". If you speak the words or just think them doesnt mattern the system. However, the system doesnt reads your thougths. If you just imagine a banana, but do not think the word "banana", the technology wouldnt catch it (even if improved), as imaging a banana doesnt trigger a signal to the vocal system.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
God help us all if there's a problem with the AE-35 unit.
Does it still work then?
Sure it wasn't one of Joe Haldeman's novels like "Forever Peace
"?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
stories like this.
David Brin wrote about these in his novel Earth. In the book, the government outfitted these receivers in jet fighters... until they started crashing them into mountainsides. But the way he portrays household use of these things is awesome. I look forward to getting one to replace the old keyboard.
While you think verbally, you normally mumble to your self.
I know for sure that it's always the case when you read (except for some spead-reading technics that involve just looking at the text without formulating the words) and I'm pretty sure it's true for all verbal thougths.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
At last I will not have to hear four persons shouting in their phones just around my pen in the open space. And there will not be those mad-looking people talking into the empty space on the street. On the other side, someone who talk other the phone a lot may forget actually produce sounds while talking with somebody nearby.
And I was ready to learn sign language in order to communicate in noisy bars. Now I think I better get one of these :)
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
This would definitely be great in the interrogation room. Though then we'd have some big bitchfest in the YRO section wouldn't we?
I really want to know what Martian people think about us greedy Earth people. But I am not sure if they also have Adam's apple?
BTW: how do you do with the thought of our female friends? They do not have Adam's apple either, are you assuming that their thoughts are not detectable, or they have depleted every word they want to say?
Translation: I am making this post using Microsoft's speech recognition. It is obvious that vocalized speech recognition needs a lot of work before subvocal recognition challenges can be considered feasible.
I mean, when with full sound you can't get good dictation, the possibility of eeking it out of throat twitches are fairly low, methinks.
This would be great in movie theaters or restaurants it you could get them to start replacing cellphones. Imagine not having to hear someone ramble on to their cell phone in a restaurant. I you could make these things small enough you could also cheat on tests. Just wear a turtleneck.
Moo!
...I saw your throat moving...
Trouble is, like most of my ideas and inventions, I was too lazy to persue it.
Are any other slashdotters in the same boat? Who has honestly thought up an idea, shelved it a long time ago, only to see it surface recently?
Perhaps this would be a good ask slashdot...
I wonder if this could be used to 'record' what you say in your dreams. This could provide some very interesting insights on that aspect of the human psyche.
Mind the frickin' laser...
.. not what you think is printed before your eyes get around to reading it.
"A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly it cannot be heard, but the tongue and vocal cords do receive speech signals from the brain,"
Notice the phrase "..talks to himself so quietly.."?
This is NOT the same as "thinks to himself"
i.e.you mouth the words but don't blow air through your airway so no noise is made.
it's not friggin' mind reading..unlike most of the level 5 posts seem to think.
Why don't analyze nerve signals going to arms and translate them to Quake movement commands and feed them into computer. This would lower a reaction time in FPS games :).
Congratulations!
You guys have figured out that every insecure person on the planet is secretly in need of validation.
Pat yourselves on the back.
Boy #2: You're thinking about hurting us.
[the children's eyes begin to glow with a bright blue light]
Girl #1: Now you're thinking, "How did they know what I was thinking?"
Boy #2: Now you're thinking, "I hope that's shepherd's pie in my knickers."
Like that time we were in a meeting, and the ever sexy Leisel, who always wore these red/white picnic table chex pattern kind of short skirts, kept falling asleep . Her legs slowly opened and I sat there for 5 or 10 minutes (time stopped) with the sweetest view of her white sheer panties and tanned thighs. Damn dudes, this girl was fine and I made sure when she woke up she realized I was staring straight at that fine display.
Get a doctor to say to a patient he has a nasty cold and needs head surgery. Implant a sneaky eyecam and this thingie into his brain. Watch in amusement as he leads a completely normal life (except for the huge broadcasting satellite coming out of his head).
Scary. Fascinating.
Highly sellable.
I want it.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
I mean, surely you know what you're going to think, right? So why go through all the effort of "saying" it to yourself. It's not like you don't know what you're going to say.
That said, all my efforts to do without it have been met in failure.
As another poster mentioned, in OSC's Ender novels, as well as in David Brin's _Earth_. As a matter of fact, the latter described the device almost precisely as described here. Brin even thought of some important caveats: given how difficult it is for the average human being to keep their thoughts on track for 0.2ms, the thing is almost impossible to use for more than 0.3ms. (The extra 0.1ms is the length of time it takes to think 'FORKING PIECE OF SHI.zza!@EOF' as you reach for the sensors.)
:)
So don't get too excited, all you ADD, quasi-ADD and just plain procrastinatory slashdotters -- whoever ends up using this tech won't be you.
- undoware.ca
I want one I want one I want one.
I really really really want one.
Hell, not just for use on the computer, I want one that just reads what I'm saying quietly and re-broadcasts it Wizard of Oz style.
I want one!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
sounds like it might CAUSE difficult situations in some situations...like when u get chewed out by ur boss or significant other, etc. and you "subconsciously" mutter an obscenity. oops.
or like when u'r trying to "fake" it or p0rn stars.
Because it'll pick up so many swearwords that normally never quite make it into an open plan office that it'll be next to useless ;-)
Insert
I think there's a book called Earth by David Brin or something like that in which a black hole finds its way to the centre of the Earth. A similar-sounding technology has been developed as a HCI, but hardly anyone uses it because it's hard to get used to because it keeps taking things they didn't want...
Look out!
It seems that the technology that was created will be used to hear words that have not yet been created... perhaps if this technology was created earlier, we would have all been spared the abomination that is: METROSEXUAL!
I was told about 3 or so years ago that this was what was in current use by the US Special Operations.
A good friend of mine gave me this information. Was he just full of it and being a misinforming cock who took advantage of my trust? Or is this really in use today? (And has been since ~2001?)
Anyone else here feel that getting those words not yet spoken would be an absolute breakthrough in relationships with their girlfriends? Man that would have saved my butt countless times...
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Qzzyizzywixis!
It's also a word not yet defined! Take that NASA!
-------------------------------------------
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
-- Dr. Seuss
Useful, just so long as you remember to think in Californian.
Am I the only one who thought about that telepathic race of aliens in HHGTTG where they are constantly talking so their brain doesn't broadcast every thought they're having?
It's an interesting idea, though. If the FBI/CIA/KGB/MIB get ahold of you and try to interrogate you with this, just start spouting random words, it'll garble the rest of what they're trying to make you think out loud.
goon: what is your greatest fear?
me: rats! i mean...rats, i hate these questions...row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream...I always have a song running through my head, and schedule all my real thinking as a low-level background process.
If NASA and/or Major League Baseball use this new technique to read my mind, all they'll get is, "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and they're like, it's better than yours...."
IOW, "The key to this system is the entire system."
If you're not wasted, the day is.
So it can pick up signals that your brain is sending your vocal chords and mouth. Do you still have to mouth the words that you're subvocalizing? Or is it enough just to think them? The article said that it could pick up signals even when your mouth doesn't move. In that case, why would the mouth be receiving signals? I guess I need some clarification.
... or God forbid, doable from a remote distance. I'm one of those people who tends to come awefully close to saying a lot of things that are better left unsaid...
-Vendal Thornheart
I hope there's a mute button - could be a little awkward....
:-)
Austin Powers: My God, Vanessa's got a fabulous body...and I bet she shags like a minx! How do I tell them that because of the unfreezing process I have no inner monologue? (pause) I hope I didn't say that out loud just now.
That'll be going on all the time if they become widespread
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
I've had a device that could detect (and react) to words I haven't even spoken yet, for years now. I call the device "wife".
Underholdning.info
I know nothing about fluid breathing tech but I would guess that talking is difficult with lungs full of fluid.
Maybe this would make fluid breathing practical?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I want to know what he commands when he uses the Force!
Get me more tin foil!.. Tin foil.. Must buy more.
Much of the control of speech is in the movement of the jaw, lips, tongue, and inhaling/exhaling -- not just the vocal chords. This device will only pick up nerve signals for the vocal chords, which mostly affect tone.
Try saying a few things with your mouth completely open, a constant amount of air leaving your lungs, and not moving your tongue. I wouldn't want to put military hardware in control of such indistinct speech.
I think such devices would probably be x-rates, since a lot of men would use them, and we would then continously hear brodcasts of guyt thinking about the things than guys think about all the time.
I also think brainfarts might become a problem for people using this kind of equipment.
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
Subject says it all.
:)
This is probably the closest you can come to mindreading with technology so far
This is the sig that says NI (again)
This would be even easier to fool than traditional lie detectors. How many people actually think "I'm guilty, but now I'll make up some bullshit excuse" before speaking?
Not to mention you can control what you say in your mind almost as easilly as you can control what you say out loud.
So could this be combined with the audio molar implant to give us a truly hands free and silent cell phone?
This would probably just give those people in the theaters an excuse to use their phone.. "hey I'm not talking out loud"
I can't even stand people using their SMS in the theater. Stupid LCDs are really bright in the dark theater setting.
Then again, I could care less if you tug your phone in ur pocket and use one of these.
geek page at KY speaks
You know, you say that, but what were to happen if everyone had these on dates?
After an adjustment period, women would get used to the idea of being told, "wow, you have nice tits" when out on a date with someone that finds them attractive. Sure, initially, many (if not most or even virtually all) women would find it less than pleasant, but they already know every guy's secretly thinking it. When every guy starts saying it, well, they'll get used to it. Womankind will adapt.
Probably a harder adjustment for women, though, will be having the doors blown off of their head games. No hard to get, no sadistic toying with guys, no enjoying free stuff without really liking the guy all that much. Of course, at the same time, their brutal honesty would deflate a lot of male egos. Honest opinions about anatomy size, and throwing out fake orgasms, might give men a little more harsh look into the womens' sexuality than they might like. And men have to 'fess up to dating someone just for sex. But men too will adapt. Besides, the men and women that are just looking for sex will be able to find each other more easily - no smokescreens of false affection!
Clearly, this is the next dating revolution.
That would be a fantastic tool for interrogations :
"Where were you two weeks ago at 8pm?"
Very quick thought : They can't know I was really doing X.
"I was with friends. You can check my alibi."
That's how we all think when we lie. Even the best-poker faced liar has those quick thoughts, which could be picked up by this device.
There are fantastic applications in this for crimesolving, but also questions about privacy : is it right for cops to pry in people's thoughts like that, even in teh context of a police interrogation?
This must be a lot better than trying to count cards by wiggling your toes.
Damn it! Women don't have Adam's apples!! Repeat: Damn it!
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
I don't know about this, I kind of like the ability to think before I speak. Imagine using it at your office or whatever:
"Yeah, sure I can got those spreadsheets done for you hey nice tits, yeah, I'll get them done by Tuesday God I've never noticed how much you look like a monkey, I mean, no problem. I'll prioritise that and have it on your desk by tuesday you retarded gibbon. Nice tits though..."
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
What was that Johnson? i just received an email stating that I was a "GDMFSOAB". What did you mean by that? hmm?
So will NASA be sharing this tech with mobile phone companies anytime soon? Here's hoping...
Could it be used for people that have their vocal cords destroyed ?
Dont you all whisper yourself your "so secret" admin password when login? I do it all time!
nice toy... soon to be buyed at ebay,
... they talk about human speech, not sheep-speech ;-)
Of course, if they offered a built-in sheep translator I'm sure some of the people I knew in Indiana might be verrrrrrrrrrry interested....
Indiana: Where the men are men, the women are men, and the sheep are restless.
(Sorry Grip3n, just playin around on another 14 hour day...)
Now we can finally learn what Simon And Garfunkel's sounds of silence really were.
Some people can already do something akin to this. I'm one of them. --When you start developing your energy awareness, you realize one day that not all emotions you feel are your own; that you can pick up on strong 'emissions' from those around you; that when you feel a wave of love/hate/whatever come over you for somebody who there is no reason to feel those things for, this is probably what is happening. --That those feelings are eminating from that person.
This is a bit unnerving at first, (and at second and third!), especially in two cases; when you are around particularly emotional people with a lot of pain/anger, etc., it can be extremely distressing until you figure out how to regulate it. And also, it's a tough when you are around people who are aware in the same ways. --If you want to keep your thoughts private, you have to stop your mind from being so sloppy and loud. On the other hand, it gives you a whole spectrum of very useful awareness and self-control when dealing with people who have no idea about this stuff.
A battery opperated unspoken word-picker-uper, though? Ouch. That's pretty intense. Sounds like a great way to start a riot. I suspect, though, that you can regulate those impulses as well; keep the words further upstairs rather than at the edge of your throat. It'd be fun to play with one for a while.
Also. . , keep in mind, because this technology is designed to work with electro magnetic signals which can be picked up from the body, it means that such signals can be picked up from the body by a sensitive detector at a distance without the need for cables. Ain't EM fun?
-FL
This is news? My girlfriend has been doing that for years...
The most important examples of the words not yet spoken are: "sdfSDcasdcASc," "dOCIJHCIFOAWED," "#$R!@#$RE," "RTLHKMRK563w56tKGSFG," "$_{$_}++||--$_" and "sdf434Gsfdy5gSrghBw."
"According to my knowledge," said developer Chuck Jorgensen with pride, "those words has never been spoken yet!" And he added: "Some of them turned out to be valid Perl programs, though."
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I am fairly sure that similar technology already exists...
I had to spend a year in the Combined Cadet Force while at school and the largeer radio's they used had throat mikes that enabled subvocal, or at least very quiet speech.
This is something that I think ought to be integrated into cell phone technology. Include bluetooth to remove any unsightly wires and tuck the rest in behind your tie/collar/whatever...
Small dermal pads on your throat could be made nearly invisible...
No more yelling in public... in fact, if you made a small bluetooth earpiece too then the phone doesn't even have to make any noise... a completly silent conversation. What a revolution.
Might there be subtle body language changes related to this that could account for the phenomenon of having *a priori* knowledge of what someone was about to say?
Does this mean I won't have to hear all the really stupid conversations over cell phones I hear all the time now? Can we replace the annoying ringer with a shock collar as well?
I have never studied it formally, but I believe it can be phrased similarly to your question: "Cognitive thought is impossible without a language or equivalent system of metaphors".
You'll find a lot of discussion on the web about it. Also, I believe Noam Chomsky has a great deal to say about it.
Forgive my lack of precise knowledge, but this might give you a starting point for further investigation.
Oh my god, we will understand Kenny! Ah, those NASA bastards...
[]'s Carlos Cardoso - Becoming a brazilian ProBlogger, typo by typo
I suspect one of the more interesting uses this might be put to would be to have the device record while you're sleeping. It would be capable of providing a transcription of your dream speech. For those of us in creative fields, this would be a wonderful source for novel ideas and concepts from which to work. Some of my best work had it's genesis in the poorly remembered bits and pieces of my dreams the night before. It could be a bit frightening as well though, there's a *lot* of processing that goes on below the level of concious perception. It might be a bit disconcerting to have access to this other self which isn't a normal part of our self concept.
Someone was complaining about how silly it was that the Enterprise-D computer would know 'immediately' where to send Captain Picard's voice when he was going to ask for the bridge and why there was an 'immediate' response from Riker, Data or whomever...
This is why!
While the current version might require being connected directly to your head, future versions might 'read' you from afar to be able to anticipate the next words out of your mouth!
Apparently, it seems that you can complain about the impossibility of a Science Fiction show one day and then Slashdot will provide you some answers leading to the technology you griped about previously...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
"This proved we could browse the Web without touching a keyboard."
NASA - Making one-handed typing a thing of the past
Comments thus far seem to imply that people are thinknig that this thing will magically pluck your thoughts from your brain. What I got out of it is that this is the next generation of sub-vocal microphones that are used by the military. You still have to "vocalize" (i.e. manipulate your voice box and perhaps toungue and jaw) in order for the thing to detect anything at all. So, on a mind reading level, how is that any different than a regular microphone? If you were in a situation where someone wanted to obtain insight in to your subconcious thoughts (i.e. an interogation), perhaps they might be able to gain something. But it seems to me that you could conciously tighten your larynx to prevent anything from being transmitted.
April 1st isn't till the Thursday after next
The same principle may be applied to the cocleal nerves in the ear. By giving the listener low level white noise to listen to it is possible to 'hear' words or sounds that the subject is 'expecting' to hear or anticipating. The auditory recognition subsystems feed back partially recognised sounds to tune the ear to the what is expected in context.
When used as a 'thought' listening device though it's fairly useless, as I would imagine is the throat version. The reason is that these signals are formed by relatively autonomous IO subsystems of the lower brain, and have no bearing on cognition as performed by the higher brain. Hence the saying 'engage your brain before your mouth'. Its perfectly possible to speak in toungues, allowing the motor systems to babble without any higher level cognition.
The first mention of this technology I've seen is in 'Have Spacesuit, Will Travel'.
"Let's just say it moved me...TO A BIGGER HOUSE! Oh, I said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet!" Krusty, blowing his cover at when asked why he voted for Burns's film.
It's really good. Honest.
I just hope my wife doesn't get her hands on one of these things!
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The Dream Police
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
What kind of sensors did they use to measure the nerve movements? And where can I get some.
Just curious, what did you mean by Chinese not having a proper phonetic language?
Although, I do get your point wondering about Spanish and Chinese. I'm bilingual and find I think differently when I'm thinking in English, compared to when I'm thinking in my native language. Both are equally easy, but your thoughts get structured differently by the languages.
On a related point, I wonder if this machine works better with some languages than others.
"Must think in Russian" "(Fire flare)" Sure, you guys remember, Cliint Eastwood in a movie where he wasn't a renegade cop.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
"So we silently spelled out 'NASA' and then submitted it to a well-known Web search engine. We electronically numbered the Web pages that came up as search results. We used the numbers again to choose Web pages to examine. This proved we could browse the Web without touching a keyboard."
Maybe we should hand those NASA boys a mouse?
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Like sniffing out metadata in a MS Word document?
Hook politicians up to this during a debate. See what they are really thinking when they are not speaking.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
If your adversary can see you well enough to read your lips then you have bigger problems than them finding out your plans, dontcha think?
The advantage of these devices is that if you happen to be in close proximity to an adversary that can't see you, you can coordinate with your team without alerting anyone else to your presence.
Simply take a vocal sample of the person of interest. Now think your words and with a little quick signal processing out comes the voice of the person of interest speaking your words. Fun at parties and for police mounting "sting" operations. Possibly could render recorded conversations inadmissible as evidence.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
the orwellian characters at least had their minds as their private havens. but in 2004 its no longer so. alas the day !!
Anyone read _Earth_ by David Brin?
If you truly form words completely as your are reading them, and you read much faster than you can write, type, or speak, would this make for quick transcription? With a system like that, I could read a book and have a copy typed up. This might make a good verification tool for Project Gutenberg and other transcriptions.
So if I understand this article correctly, when the technology grows enough, you could attach this to someone and question them, and you might get what they're really thinking. It could go beyond lie detecting, and actually pull out the truth (or what that person thinks is the truth).
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Just think what this means for the future of fighting games! No longer will I be held back by my left thumb's poor dexterity! I'll just think of the moves and bring on the ass-whoopings! SHWEEEEET!
Didn't Orson Scott Card have Ender use a system like this in one of the Ender's Game books? (I think it was Speaker for the Dead).
This technology was used extensively in the late 80s by Mr. Subliminal on SNL.
SharkJumper
I for one welcome our mind-reading overlords
Batman: "Slake your thirst. You'll have worse than a parched sensation when we're through with you!"
As an educator, I see a nightmare if this technology goes mainstream. Kids will send messages through calculators, which is bad enough. How the hell would you stop this?
-Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
Dude, this would kick ass under water. Remember that part in Abyss where he was breathing that water that was pinkish hued enough not to drown him? Yeah he had to type his speech out on a tiny ass little keyboard, instead of "speaking" using his throat and stuff... Yeah that would rock, if he could communicate at the normal rate. Go technology!
Yes, I mean a crowded theater that's not actually on fire.
I assume he's referring to their alphabet, not their actual language, since all vocal human languages are phonetic.
Although, I had thought that there was a phonetic alphabet available to Chinese speakers.
Then again it's not really certain that the English alphabet is phonetic either, and if you sound out this sentence phonetically you'd understand.
Now this would be good for combat, specops. And, my favorite.... Airsoft!
David Whatley
That would be awesome if they made Ender's Game into a movie! Even better if they did the whole series and included the ender's shadow series. Of course I doubt any movie would do it justice.
/. Heroics - 99.999%
Years back, I wrote a SF story using this gimmick. I called it "mental telephony."
Coming soon to a spy-shop near you: Cochlear implants are a mature technology. This allows one to "hear" putting both ends of the conversation well inside the current state of the art.
I figure this would be very useful when running covert ops. If the hookups can be hidden, you could run teams of agents through airports unnoticed. Nowadys, you got the men in black talking into their cufflinks with telltale coiled wires snaking up to their ears.
Even if you can't conceil the gear, you can still run teams of ninja types in paramilitary situations.
...old news
Use Chewing Gum
Just become one of those obnoxious people who ALWAYS chew gum with their mouth open. Not just good for your teeth, now it's protecting your privacy!
See you can think or read to yourself while chwewing gum, right?
This sounds alot like Terry Pratchett's idea of "Invisible Writings". Since all books are influenced by those that were written before it, you can deduce the contents of books that have not been written yet by analyzing existing texts.
7061756c4073697267616c616861642e6f7267 687474703a2f2f7777772e73697267616c616861642e6f726
this will mean that after his last bit of motor operations cease, he will still be able to communicate..in-fact, he could give extemporaneous lectures again and even comment on conversations rather than the method he uses now of constructing sentences by selecting words for a computer to speak.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Combine this with a transmitter and receiver, and you get the ability to have sub-vocal backchannel communication with people
I for one welcome our new techno-telepathic overlords.
Seriously though, military applications abound for this. Silent communication without having to maintain line-of-sight to read code hand gestures would be just one. This could be done in short order since the set of commands it has to recognize is short.
And the Secret Service would be a natural implementation for this as it advances to the stage where they can turn the recorded signals directly into speech. Right now, it's just a few commands and numbers.
And if they can feed them back along the same pathways and let the brain interpret the signals, or simulation through the skin to the auditory nerves to prevent eavesdropping on the receiver, all the better.
To keep the channels open, have them keep a single tone in their minds to enable communications (that you can detect) and you have voluntary mind-talk a la The Tomorrow People.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
But with this, you don't even have to move your lips, getting rid of the optical hole in the security.
They're mapping signals to entire words according to the article, which is better for controlling a machine, but you can bet soon they'll be mapping to phonemes for human-to-human communication.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Man, I could be writing this post with such a device ... now that would be cool!
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
The headline and quote from NASA is totally misleading.
All this software does is track your mouth as you SPEAK silently. There's no thought reading at all. You are still mouthing the words.
This is a cool invention and could have applications, particularly in noisy environments or where silence is essential, but receiving words before they are spoken? Hardly.
A better headline would be: NASA invents computer that reads lips.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
She could always tell what I was about to say and warn me not to say it.
In one of the best eco-SciFi books I've ever read, Earth (by David Brin), subvocal technology is mentioned rather frequently. Ahhh... I wish David Brin would come out with another book that was half as good as Earth.
Un-news
"The story indicates the method could be useful on space missions or other difficult working conditions."
Hmm, I read this and though more along the lines of a guy in a black outfit with a breathing problem saying: "Your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong...."
God help the poor sucker in an interrogation room after this.
I remember reading a book -ages- ago (I would have been 12 or 13), and only remember one point from it: There was a character (female, I think?) who was apparently gifted with telepathy, but in reality, she simply picked up on people's subvocalizations. I don't think I've ever read Ender's Game. Does anyone know what this might be?
I seem to remember liking the book, but I can't remember what it was for the life of me. It seems that it had to do with a lead male character who was a fugitive or spy or something, and the female character, who startled the male character by picking up on his thoughts via subvocalization.
I've been trying for years to perfect the art of talking without moving my lips, now, with this new invention I can conquer the world with my amazing powers of ventriloquism, see , my incredible talking ...Ahem...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
So, now they have to revise Alien tagline?
Someone can hear you scream in space.
Consider the source of your response. It's not original, it's not carefully thought out, it's reflexive and it's designed not just to put me down but to warn others not to think outside certain boudaries lest they stray too far from the herd and be punished through social pressure. All in all, a very effective control method. (For the weak.)
In any case, these are not the earmarks of a thinking man. These are the earmarks of a man flying on 'auto-pilot'.
Consider this stuff! It's important.
-FL
There's little use to the pain if you know it's coming and you want it. I've never had a blood draw not hurt.
-I am an elective eunuch.
I like the idea of being able to encrypt your comments so that you can communicate secretly to other people while in their presence.
Could become a serious business advantage to be able to do this.
From the article: "This proved we could browse the Web without touching a keyboard."
Heck, I can do that already! It's called a "mouse".
Now I can here me talk to myself.....
Consider the source of your response. It's not original, it's not carefully thought out, it's reflexive and it's designed not just to put me down but to warn others not to think outside certain boudaries lest they stray too far from the herd and be punished through social pressure. All in all, a very effective control method. (For the weak.)
You're making some rather large assumptions here. You are assuming that I have not considered this stuff. You are assuming that I am on auto-pilot. Maybe I'm too far away or something, because you're not picking me up very well apparently.
Oh I just thought of something fun. Walk around thinking hard, "Can you hear me now?" "How about now?"
"persons wanting to speak by telephone without being overheard"
With earbuds and subvoc, your phone is indistinguishable from telepathy. When we get a reasonable optical overlay interface, we'll be that close to "dialing" into a global group mind.
--
make install -not war
Yes, I think this would be a good system for making the entire planet a safe and happy place to live, where nobody is ever in fear of anything that might even resemble something even remotely doubleplusungood.
Ratbert, demonstrating his psychic abilities: "I predict eight heads in a row, followed by hen noises."
Dilbert, after the eighth 'heads' on the coin toss: "That was LUCK, I say! LUCK LUCK LUCK LUCK LUCK"
So that's how they managed to clean that up...
DiscDividers tabbed plastic CD dividers: divider cards f
I only know English. If I were to try and learn Spanish at the age of 26, would I ever get to know Spanish as good as if I grew up speaking it?
...might be even more effective in combination with Desmond Morris's method of reading small facial tics/movements and body language. You can throw statements at them and judge whether they're true or false just by the subconscious/preconscious reaction. If you can get them talking, even if they're trying to evade, all the more information.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Hook this technology up to a device which can administer an electro shock and I imagine my obessive compuslive disorder/Tourette's would soon be a thing of the past!
I worked in a neurophysiology lab in the 1980s and when we were doing EEG we would get artifacts that we traced to pre speech nerve stimulus to the throat muscles. I don't think we documented this finding but I know we discussed the idea of attaching more specifically located sensors and seeing if we could decode prespeech thoughts. I couldn't get the lab director interested so the idea went nowhere. It should be noted that the computing power required to do the analysis in real time wasn't available at that time in any reasonably wearable form factor.
NASA finds the answer to the question:
"If a tree falls in the forest while nobody's around, does it make a sound?"
Men believe what they want. - Caesar
"It's a good thing he doesn't know how much I hate his guts."
"It's a good thing you don't know how much he hates your guts."
That is a post hoc ergo propter hoc ("after this therefore because of this") fallacy. Language problems is just one of the many symptoms of autism which lead us to believe that they have a distinctly different pattern of thought. We can only speculate that some subset of those symptoms are closer to the problem on a cognitive level. For example, Simon Baron-Cohen would probably argue that autistic people have no theory of other minds, therefore don't have the same understanding of the purpose of language as other users, and therefore use language poorly from the perspective of those other users.
On the other hand, I remember reading somewhere that monotheistic religion was impossible before the invention of Aramaic and Hebrew because earlier languages couldn't express the necessary abstractions.
You're right that if applied in a police state, where only the authorities had the ability to read the subvocalisers, then such technology could be of great harm to human rights. However if everyone had access to everyone else's subvocalisations, then it could completely transform society. A transparent society where you knew what everyone else was thinking would be so totally different from our own, I think we can't even begin to speculate on the pros and cons.
There is significant recent evidence (see, for example, The User Illusion) to suggest that consciousness has no control over our creativity but only our actions. In other words, your nonconscious makes up all sorts of things to say and your conscious only acts as a filter to choose the most appropriate. Tor Norretranders suggests this may be a fundamental flaw in Christianity where thoughts are sinful over Judaism where only actions are sinful.
I have no idea whether your consciousness kicks in before subvocalisation, but if not this technology is probably useless to everyone but psychotherapists and artists.
A water proof version of this would be sweet for scuba diving. You could pull this off without the need for a full face mask.
Also this could finally make voice recognition useful. The biggest drawback to voice rec is having to talk to a computer with other people around and feeling out of place. On a bus, in a cube farm, etc. If you could talk to a computer without disturbing people around you, that would be sweet.
I tried using voice rec some years ago. I got a lot of cool things done, but always felt really wierd with my coworkers around, all working away quietly, and me talking outloud ramdomly to a computer.
J
The article claims one can compare signals in the throat to sounds produced/though, and then relibily translate just the signals without hearing the sounds. If this works then do the rest of my muscles work the same way? Do I send impulses to my arm when I think about moving it even if I don't? Could a system be designed to read that as well? Could this be used as a new imput method?
Beware of gifts bearing Greeks.
I first noticed that I subvocalize when I read when I was auditioning for a play. Tough habit to break, but I did. Literally, my vocal cords moved, as did my lips, but no vibrations were made.
I think that's an exaggerated version of what this is picking up, in which case you could train yourself not to send these signals if you didn't want to. Or override those small signals by speaking/subvocalizing constantly "blah, blah, blah, I'm bored, his breath smells bad, blah blah blah".
IIRC, Damon Knight wrote a short story (probably 30 or more years ago) about meeting aliens that could hear humans' subvocalizations (svs). The main plot was about how the aliens would interpret the svs as speech that should be acted upon, not as wishes to be ignored. There was a technology developed to suppress the svs. The final sentence of the story, which followed a recital of a great pianist at which the sv suppressor malfunctioned, has the protagonist receiving a small package delivered to his room, and remembering that he had sv-ed during the recital "I wish I had those hands."
This is the Constitution.This is the Constitution under the Bush administration. Any questions?
It will sell. It will totally sell.
The research needs to be done to provide a universal
base commands set. This gear will eventually be able
to be attuned to more than just non-vocal words; I see
it being a hyper interface, a shorthand of sorts.
This has wicked potential and I SURE hope someone
who's in a position to take advantage of this opportunity
sees it and jumps on it. We ALL need this.
200 Billion dollar industry by 2009 if everyone
jumps on it now. (that would be sweet)
And what about people with multiple personalities? Could you imagine having a PDA in your pocket logging all the unspoken text only to come home and read the internal arguements.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
What about people sufficiently advanced to be able to think multiple "commentaries" at once, would the nervous signal sent to the speech organs be a jumble to this tech?
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
It's been announced, but that is all:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400403/
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
NASA's the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen.
I don't think that illiterate people think differently than literate people, they just probably have less exposure to various written works and are probably better at guessing meanings to fit in to a literate world. People who have no language at all (this happens to deaf people in many parts of the world as well as the much more uncommon feral children) are probably even more stunted in intellectual development due to not being able to really receive ideas from other people, but people who learn language later in life will describe thoughts they had prior to language acquisition...
Do you have to think in Russian and fit the suit?
Can I have a copy of Marathon 1/2/Infinity? (Whichever one(s) you have would be fine...)
Every time you run "emerge", a Microsoft drone dies.
Who needs to assume anything? I'm simply pointing out your total lack of original thought and telling you what it implies. If the Tin-Foil joke had a counter, it'd be in the multi-millions at this point. And it STILL wouldn't make any sense. That fact alone demonstrates how little you grasp of the subject at hand. So, yeah, while I'm at it, I might as well gauge you to be largely ignorant on the subject you are criticizing.
I also note that your secondary reactions are similarly un-original and thoughtless. So let's scrape away another layer and see how far down your auto-responses go before we hit the bottom of the yogurt container and get to the fruit. If there is any. (Some yogurts are bland all the way to the plastic.)
So tell me. How much do you know regarding this stuff, or are you simply a lazy Occam's Razor guy who only put in only the barest level of token 'research' so that he can say, "See? I Looked!"
-FL
I remember reading a quote out of a book by Dr. Wilfred Funk called "Six Weeks to Words of Power". The quote by Dr. John Dewey in that books stated "Thought is impossible without words". But then again that book was really old. I found an intriguing link posted below - What do you "Think"? http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/dewey/Dewey_191 0a/Dewey_1910_a.html
I've wandered through this same exchange many, many times before, and typically, the 'other end of the table' is painfully predictable, (especially in a forum like Slashdot), with the end results landing in the same general areas.
So I'm certainly guilty of cutting and pasting old thoughts just as much as I blamed you of doing, (though you were toying with me; cheeky monkey!), so you'll have to believe me when I say that there is no blood vessel pending rupture. I nearly didn't bother coming back here to check responses. Glad I did! Today is already ten times more interesting than it was half an hour ago!
Usually, the best I hope for with such opening volleys is that new perspectives are made available to unlikely people. The world is broken and punishing exactly because of the limited views most individuals carry around, and moreover, because those with knowledge are nearly always unwilling to discuss certain subjects in the open. I see no shame whatsoever in rocking the boat. People will always laugh, but in the end, the ideas flow and the world parts its ways for you. As I have found, life is an extremely enjoyable and rewarding ride when you have little fear of breaking convention and are able to smoothly and intelligently alter your views as new information makes itself available.
Then, on days like today, I'll be fortunate enough to make connections with interesting people who offer valuable and unexpected lessons. --Even if the lesson is as simple as just learning the extent of one's public reach.
As I have learned, if you don't talk, bounce ideas and suffer the inevitable wry winks, then growth happens altogether too slowly for my liking, if at all.
So, if you don't mind my asking, (now that the boring part is over!), who are you and where did we meet?
-FL
This goes beyond governments and such. Brain-in-a-jar will likely happen just in small groups without nations and such (like how it was when we evolved).
-I am an elective eunuch.
I think this question is justified - "Why cant they just build rockets to send people to Mars?" Drop these interesting but borderline explorations. (My 5 eurocents mnmn (145599) is not a troll or a flamebait)
Yes, there are phonetic systems for transcribing Chinese (bo po mo and pinyin).
Although it would be a challenge applying the NASA technology to Chinese because of all the dialects (same character / meaning - totally different pronunciation, not even the same word). You would basically have to treat Chinese as several languages... one implementation for Mandarin, another for Cantonese, etc.