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Northrop Grumman To Develop Brain-Wave Binoculars
An anonymous reader writes "An AP wire reports that DARPA has granted a $6.7 million contract to Northrop Grumman to develop 'brainwave binoculars'. The binoculars will be built into a helmet, which will include EEG electrodes that will monitor the wearer's brain activity for patterns consistent with object identification/recognition. From what I can gather, the idea is that when you look at a far-off or partially obscured object without noticing it, your subconscious probably did notice it and tried, unsuccessfully, to identify it. The EEG in these binoculars would pick up on that kind of subconscious activity and draw the wearer's attention to the object in question. The goal is that these binoculars would be able to pick up on any object anywhere in the wearer's field of view, where a person can only pick up on things that he focuses both his eyes and his attention on. This delves into some very interesting territory: it would be an electronic device that uses human eyes to collect data, and even uses a human brain to partially process the data. Since it also passes its results back to the human providing the data and initial processing, it essentially adds a second processing loop in parallel to the wearer's visual system."
If this makes it past vaporware, I'll dance a jig.
... those x-ray glasses they used to sell in the backs of comic books.
What do you want to bet that the only thing these binoculars register is 'tits'.
Have gnu, will travel.
Does this remind anyone of the Necromunger Scope beings from Chronicles of Riddick?
Servicemen reprimanded for zooming in on young women's breasts. One of the servicemen was quoted as saying, "It's the damn sub-conscious link! I can't do anything about it!" Defense department reevaluating binoculars.
Think about using this in interrogations.
Interrogator: "Do you recognize these photos of bomb making materials?"
Suspect: "No, no I don't."
Interrogator: "Liar! Our brain wave scanner says you do! Off to the waterboard with you!"
From reading the short article, it looks like a method to take images the brain filters out as unimportant, and bring them up to the conscious level.
Problem: if you do this, wouldn't this clutter your view with unimportant images, or alternatively cause cognitive confusion? A person with this device attached literally couldn't trust their eyes anymore.
Sounds like Mescaline.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
So long as you don't try and reformat with ReiserFS -- I hear that's a little dangerous.
I remember reading about the research behind that; that the "subconscious" detected things quicker than the conscious human. But if I could find it again, I'd like to see the details of the testing.
My guess is that the time between subconsciously and consciously recognizing something is used for verifications. So you get quicker results in the case where the image is, in fact, what you are asked to recognise, but you'd get false positives in the other cases.
I mean, recognizing threats is pretty important, evolution-wise. Since this device just takes existing data from the brain and feeds it back in, it's hard to believe it would be of any help, or we would have evolved the same thing.
Guy wearing binoculars notices some object
...
Binoculars sense this and draw attention to object by putting some kind of HUD symbol on screen
Guy wearing binoculars notices HUD display object
Binoculars sense this and draw attention to object by putting some kind of HUD symbol on screen
Guy wearing binoculars notices HUD display object
Binoculars sense this and draw attention to object by putting some kind of HUD symbol on screen
Guy wearing binoculars notices HUD display object
Binoculars sense this and draw attention to object by putting some kind of HUD symbol on screen
Binoculars and/or Guy's brain explodes
???
Profit
The primate brain evolved in a situation where noticing hidden things was kind of important. Didn't see that shape in the grass? Oops, it was a skulking lion, you're dead, return genome to sender. We're the product of millions of years of life-or-death vision tests, and as a consequence, we're pretty good at it.
This device is based on the idea that some part of your brain might notice a hidden thing, but doesn't bother to tell the rest of you so you can react. This is evolutionary suicide. I'd have a hard time coming up with a trait that would be naturally selected out of the gene pool faster.
If this device worked, anyone who could use it would have gone extinct long ago.