Controlling Computers With the Brain

Killam0n takes note of a story in CNN Money on progress in controlling computers via brainwaves. From an aspirin-sized implant a quadriplegic is now using to play computer games, the article extrapolates out to a near future in which we will all be wearing headband computers and IM'ing one another as if telepathically. "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."

Comments

I'm not jacking in

[no_pets]

Screw that! I'm not connecting my brain to the company network.

Re:I'm not jacking in

[FlyByPC]

Meh. It depends on the interface. I'd use an EEG-style system, which noninvasively reads electrical impulses. I'll be damned if I'll let them implant anything, though. Even LASIK is still way too radical for me.

As far as effectiveness -- and it replacing a keyboard and mouse? Talk to me about bandwidth. Can I fly a plane (Flight Sim) better with mind control? Well, maybe. Can I type up a report faster and with fewer errors than using my Model M? Perhaps someday.

I think the bottom line is that they are making progress -- but then again, I remember getting a voice-controlled Verbot back in the day. It would do the correct command about 30% of the time, as I remember. Speech recognition has improved, but we're still by and large not dictating our compositions to our PCs, even with three orders of magnitude more memory and CPU speed. Somehow, I think mind-control will take just as much work.

Then again, I hope they prove me wrong. Just on the coolness factor alone.

Re:I'm not jacking in

[brunascle]

aaaaaaggghhhh everytime i look at my wife the goatse guy pops up in the corner of my vision

Re:I'm not jacking in

[Radres]

That happens to you, too?

Re:I'm not jacking in

[cayenne8]

" I'll be damned if I'll let them implant anything, though. Even LASIK is still way too radical for me."

Well, I'm hesitant to have LASIK, 'cause I notice that pretty much all the doctors performing the procedure are all wearing glasses.

Re:I'm not jacking in

[MyLongNickName]

And Lord forbid that the thing causes your spelling and lack of capitalization to degenerate FURTHER!

Really?

[east coast]

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.

You lazy bastards.

Re:Really?

[Anne_Nonymous]

Don't think of it as lazy. Think of it as freeing up a second hand to reach for the Kleenex.

Mind-controlled computers will last until...

[Half-pint HAL]

Mind-controlled computers will last until all trained computer operators have been sacked for sending rude emails to the boss. Worst part? They won't even know they've done it.

Re:Mind-controlled computers will last until...

[Radon360]

Great, so now we can look forward to people unwittingly sending flaming or sexually harrassing emails in their sleep and not know it until they get called on it the next day.

What buzzword should develop for this phenomena?

Sleeptexting?

InSPAMnia?

Re:Mind-controlled computers will last until...

[Metasquares]

If we can determine what people are thinking, we can certainly determine whether they're in a fully conscious state while they're doing it. With proper precautions, I don't think that's an issue.

Could we come up with articles a little older?

[smithbp]

This article is date July 24, 2006...I might be wrong, but this would make it a bit outdated and probably not worthy of being on the frontpage of /.

Re:Could we come up with articles a little older?

[FlyByPC]

Outdated? Slashdot?
You must be new here.

Re:Could we come up with articles a little older?

[Ohreally_factor]

You're probably using the wrong metaphor for slashdot. Slashdot is like a wine cellar. This story is an amusing vintage with citrus-y overtones and an underlying note of distopia. Should go great with Salmon.

Re:Could we come up with articles a little older?

[dotpavan]

uh uh, kdawson had "thought of" posting it that week (using his brain-controlled-laptop), but somehow it slipped. Just like this was supposed to be a first post!

What a terrible path

[steveo777]

This is where we get into big trouble. At one point or another, everyone wants a phone that can listen in to the other line a few seconds after the call is ended. Just to hear what the jack ass on the other line really thinks. With thoughts 'controlling' your keyboards these kinds of things will happen. With this kind of stuff around, we'll be accidentally IMing the wrong thought at the wrong time to the wrong person.

The next step will be mind-controlled Gundam-style robots for everyone. What's this world coming to?!

Re:What a terrible path

[Yvanhoe]

lapsus exist in the real world, you have to control your mind for these not to happen. I think the same is really easy to do once you can have a feedback to know what exactly is "heard". Right now it seems frightening because you don't know how it works, but once you have tried it and created a communication model in your brain, I think you will be fully able to retain "thought-saying" "jackass" while still thinking it

That's all fine and dandy

[chatgris]

Until we find out what kind of torture this imparts on the BRAIN.

Personally, I'd take the risks from straining my wrists due to mechanical motion over implanting a chip (along with unknown stressors) in my brain any day. If I'm going to potentionally cause harm to one part of my body, it'll be my wrists over my brain.

I'm not a luddite, really! But my brain is just too vital to me to start tossing implants into it.

Excellent!!!

[arthurpaliden]

No more brainless computer users.

Reminds me of the Vertebrane in "Manna"

[ribuck]

This reminds me of the futuristic story "Manna" by Marshall Brain (the founder of HowStuffWorks.com).

In the story, computers progressively dehumanise work in the interests of efficiency (imagine Amazon's Mturk applied to McDonalds). When things get really bad, the protagonist is lucky enough to be rescued and taken to Australia where an alternative future project has produced what seems at first glance to be paradise (but is it really?).

Anyway, the human-computer interface in the Australia project is an implant that replaces the top three vertebrae.

The story is not a masterpiece, but it's an enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

Because someone has to say it....

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

"You mean you have to use you hands? That's like a baby's toy!"

Powerful brains

[Jeff Hornby]

But what if my brain isn't powerful enough to control a computer?

You need an agent.

[twitter]

Screw that! I'm not connecting my brain to the company network.

Sooner or later, you won't have a choice. Things will have to be done and you won't be given another way to do it.

What you will want then is a trusted agent between you and the network. If you did not worry about your computer being run by free software that you can trust, you should start now. Now more than ever, what's yours should stay yours.

Re:You need an agent.

[dlthomas]

Trusting trust, with respect to compilers, was solved a while ago. Provided you have the source for one compiler, compile it on two unrelated compilers. This gives you two binaries which are very probably bitwise different, but should be functionally identical if no one is doing anything fishy. Compile the original source with each of these. The same source through (functionally) the same compiler should produce bitwise identical results. This is easy to verify. If they are the same, then either *both* original compilers have been tampered with *in the same way*, or the result is a true compilation of the source. If that's not thorough enough for you, pick further unrelated compilers, and more of them. You can get the probability of tampering down vanishingly small. Note that it doesn't matter how old/obscure/slow/pessimizing the compilers in question are, as long as they correctly support the language.

Typical Typist on a boring afternoon

[ch-chuck]

"Documents to be submitted to the document control center (DCC) must first be approved by the ISO committee, which meets every Tuesday, or Wednesday during a holiday. Submissions must be received before 9AM on Tuesday, preferably by email. Quickly he grabbed Laura and, while holding her tightly, looked deep into her eyes. Her heaving breasts rose and fell in a quickening pace as his hands caressed her hair. His deep, muscular, voice whispered, "Darling, I must have you now!". Documents that have been rejected must be corrected by the author and be approved by a supervisor before resubmitting to the DCC"

Dream bigger

[Metasquares]

This is called BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) technology, and it's a fairly hot topic in HCI these days. I think people are dreaming too low-level, though: there are some things, like composing music, that are far easier to do mentally than physically. These are the things people should be getting excited about (after we perfect curing the disabled with it), not moving mice across the screen and telepathically IMing people, both of which have reasonably natural interfaces already.

oh the humiliation

[Jeek Elemental]

brain not found think "space" to continue

The next craze for new parents

[G4from128k]

Given the amazing plasticity of the young brain, the time to do this is when the kid is really really young. Ideally, a child might most effectively learn to mentally control a cursor/computer interface about the same time they learn to control their fingers and toes. At that age it really will make controlling a computer as effortless as walking or talking.

The time will come when children that didn't get "Baby's First Brain Mouse" in their first few months of life will be at a scholastic disadvantage to those that did.

Uh...we're all in trouble

[grasshoppa]

I am writing porn this from a computer boobs of the future, sex based on the mind control hot chicks input techniques described teen oral here.

Since coffee this boobs technology was first sugar implemented, I have hamsters been unable midgets to hold a single job.

Re:Uh...we're all in trouble

[Avatar8]

Exactly.

I don't know of anyone with the discipline to keep a single focused thought in their head for more than one minute. That's how our brains work. We take input from multiple sources, perform all manner of manipulation on it, add our own inner voice and it's rather a cacophony in there.

Imagine walking down the street of the future wearing one of these headband computers. You're dictating a memo for work, IM'ing your significant other andupdating your grocery list. Just then an attractive man/woman walks by. Not only do all the above functions stop momentarily, but fantasy kicks in and you imagine that person naked. Your headband takes this as a command to open Photoshop, capture an image of the person, alter it to match your mental image and immediately insert it into your document, send it to your SO and updates your grocery list to buy melons or sausage.

Filtering will be a key hurdle in this technology.

All work *already* performed by mind control

[zooblethorpe]

"All work -- emails, spreadsheets, and Google searches -- will be performed by mind control."

Hell, it already is -- somehow my boss's very whims turn into tasks for me to perform. No real difference here... :-P

Wheres my damn datajack?

[Orclover]

Serriously where the hell is it? I'ts 07 and I dont have a flying car, monkey buttler or datajack to plug my head directly into a computer! WTF man? In a few years I am going to turn 40, if I cant take "cybering" to a whole new level or braindump into halo 5 with full virtual sensory control then why the hell are we even bothering with new technology. We are waaay the hell behind in this crap from where we should be. Hell by 2020 I need to be able to ditch my meat corpse permenantly and become a ghost in a datastream somewhere enjoying all the world wide web until a wayward asteroid ends the party for the whole planet.

I got a schedule here people!

no, you fools, wrong Russia joke!

[jollyreaper]

"The only drawback with these computers is you have to think in Russian." See? Much funnier reference. :)

And on-topic, there's some totally amazing shit going down in cybernetics these days.

http://www.sigmorobot.com/technology/news/toast_bi onic_man.htm

This guy here has thought-controlled limbs. The nerves that controlled his arms have been rewired into muscles in his pecs and the arm reads the twitches there and turns that into motion.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5140090.stm

Limbs can now be attached directly to the skeleton.

Artificial muscles (sorry btech fans, they aren't called myomar)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4817848.stm

Advanced bionic hand

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4225896.stm

Article featuring Claudia Mitchell as well as Jesse Sullivan, both real-life cyborgs

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,2 0457094-8362,00.html

We're really making some fantastic advances in this field. The major future hurtles will be better feedback from the limb, getting it to run on blood glucose so a separate power supply is not needed, and making the whole affair less bulky and more natural. The ideal goal here would be a limb that would pass for perfectly natural, both for the observer and the amputee.

Jacking off will be more important

[cyberianpan]

As is many people, especially those engaging on /. connect in a bit to much. Daily we've x personal emails, y phone conversations & z page impressions & these numbers are all getting higher. Our attention spans break down from 40 --> 30 --> ... 5 mins in such environments as is.

Being persistently connected at a cognitive level might be dangerous -
we will start processing informational subliminally if over-loaded & yes for example this could lead to brainwashing...

certainly tiring ...

it would force us to structure our days better & jack out entirely even during work just to escape the buzzing, but not all will- if we've information / net addicts with the crude i/o devices of today what will come in 20 years ?

uh Sure...

[makoffee]

That all sounds great but can you imagine trying to tech support that? "You say you can't get to your email? Have you tried thinking about it?" In reality the learning curve of your average desktop user may never allow this.

At best I see something like this working just about as well as current voice recognition software.

So What?

[twitter]

Twitter, read "Reflections on Trusting Trust" [no link provided]. Now. Free software doesn't provide full protection.

Thanks, I have read that before. So what? The point of free software is that you don't have to trust, you can see and verify for yourself. The learning compiler example is disturbing but not very. If you are really paranoid, you can start from scratch and toggle switches yourself. A less crazy method is to cross up distributions. Compile things from one distribution with another. Finally, you can simply trust the people at gnu.org and everyone using the tool chain that has not noticed problems. At the end of the day, free software still wins. You have every ability non free does and many more to validate what you think you have. People in the non free world are stuck trusting people who have violated that trust again and again.

Pink Elephants

[kalirion]

Hey Bob, whatever you do, don't think about reformatting the hard drive and being sure that you want to do it!

Do we really need this?

[GiantMonkey]

One of the profs at my school who works on neural prostheses for para/quadriplegics, has pointed out that this technology could very well be overkill. He showed us a video of someone with neural implants controlling a computer compared to someone using one of those mouses mounted on someones head who can use eye blinks as mouse clicks. The neural implants were far slower and couldn't produce smooth motions at all (the man was trying to sketch something with mspaint) whereas with a head mounted mouse the user was able to play a game of solitaire without problems. Granted, this was a very primitive implant that likely can be improved a lot, but is it worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient right now for barely functional neural implants when we have a simpler, cheaper, more reliable, less dangerous solution?

Monsters from the Id

[Nefarious Wheel]

The plot of Forbidden Planet -- possibly the best SF movie to ever come out of the 50's -- had in the Planet of the Krell (first major Rotoscope production too iirc) the concept that the original inhabitants had destroyed themselves after they'd learned to control their planet's engines by their minds alone. "Monsters from the Id" complained Dr. Morbius; their innermost desires controlled the engines of destruction, bypassing the conscious censors.

Another point of view is the decadent society of Moorcock's "Dancers at the End of Time" where mind control of engines of construction and destruction led to a global ennui where all forward motion of society had ceased.

The very best of these in terms of simple imagery is I believe Alan Dean Foster's short story "With Friends Like These..." which still sends shivers down my back, and is possibly the only modern-era short story to match the best of the Golden Era SF for star quality.

So what will it all lead to, sports? Will we build something amazing, huge and new with these mind-driven machines, or will we simply amuse ourselves to death?