Computer-Aided ESP Transmits Binary Numbers, Slowly

High-C writes "Dr. Christopher James of the University of Southampton has demonstrated what is being termed 'Brain to Brain' communication. In binary, no less. In essence, one person imagined a binary number, which was picked up by an EEG and transmitted via the net to another PC. The received signal was displayed on LEDs flashing at two different frequencies. The receiver's EEG correctly deciphered the string, resulting in a 1:1 transmission of binary data via thought. The throughput isn't great so far, at .14 bits per second, but it's an incredibly geeky proof-of-concept all the same."

Comments

NOT BRAIN TO BRAIN

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a friggin LED in the middle.

Re:NOT BRAIN TO BRAIN

[Joce640k]

Sombody is failing to understand the "Extra Sensory" part of "ESP", ie. you're not allowed to use any of the five senses.

Besides ... if you have a radio link then why not just give them bluetooth headsets and let them talk to each other?

Re:NOT BRAIN TO BRAIN

[biryokumaru]

Every 2bit moron wants to add his unintelligible opinion.

Indeed.

Re:Not ESP

[selven]

I think you meant Extrasensory Perception.

Future applications

[Loomismeister]

I give this 5 years before we start turning appliances on with our minds. MMM I want some coffee = BAM coffee starts being made!

Re:Future applications

[causality]

How about mental slashdot comment submission. You hear voices of other commenters in your mind, and you think what you want to say, it automatically appears in the site, and echoes in other commenters' minds.

Just be careful not to think "first post"

Slashdotters tend to frown on that sort of thing.

That'd require a high degree of mental discipline, to the point of being able to control both the content of your thoughts and their timing. That kind of discipline is sorely lacking in the general population, unfortunately. The way I often put it is that most people do not govern their thoughts and view them as a tool like any other; instead, most people are governed by their thoughts and can hardly imagine experiencing life apart from them. I am mostly talking here about when you "think to yourself" in your native language, and the problem with that is that when you experience all of life this way, you lose much of your ability to directly apprehend new realizations and must instead to go through the proxy of symbolic language for everything you experience.

Most people have a constant and endless supply of somewhat random thoughts that continuously pop into and out of their heads and could hardly sustain complete mental silence (i.e. a form of meditation) for even a few seconds, let alone selectively shut out unwanted thoughts with ease to effortlessly emphasize any particular one. This wouldn't be such a problem for relatively simple controls like "move this mouse cursor to the place I am thinking of" but would be a big problem for anyone intending to mentally dictate sentences and paragraphs and complex lines of reasoning without having to constantly make corrections.

What interests me is whether machines that accept this kind of input would lead to this kind of mental discipline becoming more common, as most seem to find no adventure in exploring their capabilities and fine-tuning their minds and therefore would balk at the effort without some externally imposed reason. It's a shame it has to be that way, that many need to have a fire of some kind lit under their asses before they will challenge their own limits. However, I still imagine that a society of more effective and capable thinkers would be radically different from the one that we know today and could only be an improvement. It would definitely be better than the widespread ignorance (of learning how to learn) that, whether you believe they encourage it or not, is definitely politically convenient for the powers-that-be.

Re:Future applications

[causality]

The problem has already been solved by the brain. Although we have all sorts of thoughts going on all the time, we only act on a few of them.

You'll have the problem anew if you come up with machines that interpret mental activity. A mouse and keyboard, after all, need to be acted upon. A machine that takes brainwaves for input is an input device with no such constraints.

Mind-Machine Interfaces

[selven]

Just imagine how useful these could be to disabled people.

Re:Mind-Machine Interfaces

[Hurricane78]

I just read your comment as:

Just imagine how useful these could be to disable people.

...and there we have the evil flipside of the coin.

Sorry...

Re:Not to rain on their parade..

[jim.hansson]

looks like I was not the only one watching johnny mnemonic last night. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113481/

This is the same technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

Capt Christopher Pike used to communicate.

bah, that's nothing

[jipn4]

and transmits them to the second user's brain through flashing an LED lamp

Bah, that's nothing. When I talk to my wife, I transmit my brain impulses through air, simply by flapping my tongue, and it is transmitted to her brain via vibrations in thin air! Isn't it amazing? ESP and all?

Re:bah, that's nothing

[rvw]

Bah, that's nothing. When I talk to my wife, I transmit my brain impulses through air, simply by flapping my tongue, and it is transmitted to her brain via vibrations in thin air! Isn't it amazing? ESP and all?

Wife, flapping tongue, vibrations... Man that's way too much for us simple slashdotters to handle in one sentence. We prefer flashing LEDs mind you!

Re:bah, that's nothing

[91degrees]

Really? When I talk to my wife, a completely different message is received by her half the time.

IETF RFC?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Well, until the IETF issues an RFC on this technology, it will be a non-starter.

"IP over ESP" . . . usually seen around the 1st of April.

Can we increase the bandwidth, by meth'ing up the subject?

Re:Not to rain on their parade..

[harry666t]

Why not just plain, old telepathy?

Many people have a tendency to overthink simple problems.

Re:Useless.

[PopeRatzo]

At .14 bps, people had better get able to do Huffman encoding in their heads real fast.

Because god knows new technological applications never get any faster than they do at conception.

Re:Useless.

[ShakaUVM]

>>Because god knows new technological applications never get any faster than they do at conception.

God also knows that technologies making little LED lights blink will probably never be able to sustain a real time voice communication.

Re:Useless.

[soren202]

God also knows that new technology never stretches beyond it's original setup as it matures in age.

Re:Not ESP

[interkin3tic]

As a kid I always thought ESP stood for Extra Special Powers. My ability to touch my tongue to my nose counted of course.

Re:Useless.

[Internal Modem]

It seems God knows a lot about this technology.