Typing With Your Brain

destinyland writes "This article asks, 'Why bother to type a document using a keyboard when you can write it by simply thinking about the letters?' A brain wave study presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society shows that people with electrodes in their brains can 'type' using just their minds. The study involved electrocorticography — a sheet of electrodes laid directly on the surface of the brain after a surgical incision into the skull. ('We were able to consistently predict the desired letters for our patients at or near 100 percent accuracy,' explains one Mayo clinic neurologist.) And besides typing, there's new brain wave applications that can now turn brain waves into music and even Twitter status updates — by thought alone."

Comments

Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Jeian]

Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but I can think of a whole lot of ways where broadcasting what I'm thinking could be highly, ah, embarrassing.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[pixelpusher220]

I really boobies don't know boobies what you are boobies talking about. boobies

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Kamokazi]

I wouldn't be embarrassed, but the sexual harassment lawsuits would be unrelenting.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

I wonder if they can differentiate between what I mentally “type” (which implies focus of some sort) and every random thought that happens to zip through my mind. I’d expect there to be some sort of difference – if not in the region of the brain involved then at least in the level of activity.

(My workplace categorizes TFA as “entertainment”, so I’m not sure whether this was given mention... so if it was, then no, I didn’t RTFA, but at least I have an excuse.)

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

I really boobies don't know boobies what you are boobies talking about. boobies

Dude, press pause on the Slayers episode before posting. :P

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Wrexs0ul]

I always figured the final system would require a series of specific thoughts before entering "read" mode, kinda like a login/logoff to the keyboard once your hands no longer serve that purpose.

Not so concerned right now though. Reading letters only means only the dirty thoughts you literally spell out will be displayed. All those "wish I was playing WOW" (or other 15 second occurrences) won't make it into the email to your boss since our brain uses a mesh of stimuli and and language to convey thoughts. A wicked first step though even if it's only letters.

I always pictured reading thoughts was comparing the output of a black box with a dataset of known values. But if many unknowns mean chicken, what happens if they got chicken wrong?

-Matt

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[RJFerret]

Cause:

I really boobies don't know boobies what you are boobies talking about. boobies

Effect:

....accidents in cars cause people :-D

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

I wouldn't be embarrassed, but the sexual harassment lawsuits would be unrelenting.

Why? Everytime you think of something sexual in that e-mail to your boss, you'll have to hit backspace. It's a positive feedback system. And I fail to see why this is a problem only for men -- if you knew half the stuff that went through the average woman's brain you'd probably crap a few bricks. Women make up for in detail what men do in quantity in that regard. ^___^ I'm not afraid my boss will find out... I'm worried my mother will.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, doctor, we highly respect your BWHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA Mayo roflcopter clinic.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[AndrewNeo]

I'd have a harder time getting it to just type "Mayo" instead of "mayonnaise" every time.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[AndrewNeo]

Until you automatically think CTRL+Enter in your mind, then you're screwed!

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

Until you automatically think CTRL+Enter in your mind, then you're screwed!

Control. Enter. hmmmmmmmmmm.... (smiles sweetly) I think that when I'm around my girlfriend all the time.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

And I fail to see why this is a problem only for men -- if you knew half the stuff that went through the average woman's brain you'd probably crap a few bricks

Sure, but the double standard would still ensure that the sexual harassment lawsuits against men would vastly outnumber those against women.

The typical man who opens a “whoopsie” e-mail from a female coworker would have several paragraphs worth of questionable material to delete before he had even finished reading her e-mail. The typical woman who received a similar e-mail from a male coworker would have the letter to her lawyer halfway completed...

;p

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[0100010001010011]

if you knew half the stuff that went through the average woman's brain you'd probably crap a few bricks. Women make up for in detail what men do in quantity in that regard.

Case in point. Except most adult women are smart enough not to write it down.
-
This probably won't write down every single thought that runs through your head. You still probably have to 'think' of the letters. When I type I mentally spell out every word and know that I have to hit those keys. When I'm talking to someone or just thinking about that hot waitress I'm not thinking "W-o-w w-h-a-t a g-r-e-a-t a-s-s".

I wonder what the WPM is. I've reached a point in my keyboarding skills that the limitation seems to be on the brain thinking of what to type and not on the fingers actually doing the typing.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[ArsonSmith]

I tried

C:

but got dos'ed.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

From your username, I’d have assumed it was the other way around.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[ArsonSmith]

stupid filter, C:-enter

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[fyngyrz]

Women make up for in detail what men do in quantity in that regard.

Cite? Where's your data? As far as you go, I'd be perfectly willing to accept that's how you roll, but women in general... the indirect evidence doesn't seem to support this.

In my experience, men are far more visual than women are. I think one obvious chunk of evidence for this was the pre-Internet era proliferation of men's picture magazines while one or two comparable woman's magazines (e.g. Playgirl) addressed what they thought might be a similar market. Also that the two leading magazines, Playboy and Penthouse, both specialized in visually rich pictures, including the surroundings, environment, etc., while the less successful ones kept it simple, not to say gynecological.

Another tick in this column is the huge market for makeup, sexy clothes, etc., for women; not so much for men. It would seem that men are looking specifically for visual stimulation on a level that women are not. And that women know it, because they certainly buy this stuff in large enough quantities without demanding comparable "peacock" performance from the male population.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

See colon, then enter?

That sounds dirty.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this would be equally true for all states of a person. For example, would a person who is stressed and in a hurry coincidentally have brain patterns that would be interpretted as a communication, even if not intended? Would such a thing be random characters, nonsense, or incoherent? Would pattern analysis (for example using a neural net, no pun intended) on the sequence of characters reveal behavioral bias? What would the implications be if the twitter account was hacked? Talk about having root! All your brain stem are belong to us!

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Sanat]

Reminds me of the old saying "If you drink... drive... don't park... accidents cause people."

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[gzearfoss]

From the article, the rate is up to 8 characters per minute.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

Yeah, but the next one will go to 11.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[thewils]

I was thinking more along the lines of this...
Voice recognition

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Sulphur]

X-off

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[MaskedSlacker]

My guess is that the system has to be trained. As in, it listens to your thoughts while you type out a preset text by hand, and eventually matches the motor impulses that you would normally act out to the keys you would type.

Of course, if you're one of those freaks who can type in Dvorak and QWERTY it might not work so well.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

From your username, I'd have assumed it was the other way around.

From your comment, it's obvious you've never met a lesbian. Well, now you have.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Verdatum]

Of all the boobie-laden media out there you go with an oldschool anime reference? I commend you.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Verdatum]

*Shakes fist at Websense*

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

I’ve met a few, but I must admit we didn’t really discuss their sex lives.

I just figured that being “trained” would involve... well, more sub and less dom.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[MathiasRav]

When I type I mentally spell out every word and know that I have to hit those keys.

I can't speak for you, but I will say that I doubt this is the case for the majority. I'm pretty sure that's not the case for me, at least, after years of touch typing. I'm not a native English speaker, but lately (last couple of months) I've begun mixing up 'your', 'you're', 'whose', 'who's', etc. in my writing. I correct it immediately when I see it, but I don't spell out every word when I type, so my reflexes/fine motor skills just type up whatever.

I still think, though, that a brain scanner/what it's called could read what words I intended to type and distinguish them from my regular brainstorm.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[hclewk]

What would the implications be if the twitter account was hacked?

What would happen if a solar power cell was hacked? Would you be able to send energy to the sun? Just because something can send or receive something, doesn't mean it can do both. This reads brain waves and sends updates to twitter. It does not receive updates from Twitter and send brain waves.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

I've met a few, but I must admit we didn't really discuss their sex lives.

^_^ Yes, well, babydykes are a different story.

I just figured that being "trained" would involve... well, more sub and less dom.

My nickname has nothing to do with that. Besides, curious as I am, we're too poor to get into that much. :P

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Playboy and Penthouse, both specialized in visually rich pictures, including the surroundings, environment, etc., while the less successful ones kept it simple, not to say gynecological. "

You, sir, have a very twisted definition of success.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

In my experience, men are far more visual than women are.

Typical man... thinking that sex is only about what you can see.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Verdatum]

Rope is cheap. Home Depot is a dom's best friend :D

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Unordained]

Rating Attractiveness: Consensus Among Men, Not Women, Study Finds

Men's judgments of women's attractiveness were based primarily around physical features and they rated highly those who looked thin and seductive. Most of the men in the study also rated photographs of women who looked confident as more attractive.

As a group, the women rating men showed some preference for thin, muscular subjects, but disagreed on how attractive many men in the study were. Some women gave high attractiveness ratings to the men other women said were not attractive at all.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Cite? Where's your data? As far as you go, I'd be perfectly willing to accept that's how you roll, but women in general... the indirect evidence doesn't seem to support this.

For a while I forgot that I was on slashdot, .. but this woke me up ... geeks .. jeez

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[ircmaxell]

It does not receive updates from Twitter and send brain waves.

You forgot the all-important yet from that sentence. I would imagine that would be an interesting step in the ongoing quest for faster access to information... Not that I'd use it.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

My nickname has nothing to do with that.

Of course not. I’m not really a clone, either, by the way. ;p

In hindsight, maybe I should have said “my mother was a lesbian, you insensitive clod!”

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

In hindsight, maybe I should have said "my mother was a lesbian, you insensitive clod!"

Don't you mean both moms? O_o

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[freemywrld]

For those who can't access the article, here is the information about how the system "learns":

Dr. Shih’s patients at the Mayo Clinic were asked to look at a computer screen containing a 6-by-6 matrix with a single alphanumeric character inside each square. Every time the square with a certain letter flashed, the patient focused on it and a computer application recorded the brain's response to the flashing letter. The computer software calibrated the system with the individual patient's specific brain wave patterns. When the patient then focused on a letter, the letter appeared on the screen. "We were able to consistently predict the desired letters for our patients at or near 100 percent accuracy," Shih explains. "While this is comparable to other researchers' results with EEGs, this approach is more localized and can potentially provide a faster communication rate.”

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[mcbagpipes]

Hey...I suspect the level of conversation around here might improve if peoples brains were involved in the typing process :)

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[mcgrew]

I'm guessing you have to think pretty hard to get it to type; I doubt if you're thinking about boobies nobody's going to know.

BUT... I don't think I want anybody sticking wires in my brain.

The study involved electrocorticography -- a sheet of electrodes laid directly on the surface of the brain after a surgical incision into the skull.

Yeah, I let the docs stick needles in my eye, but that was to prevent going blind. The only way I'm letting them open up my head is if it will prevent death, blindness, brain damage, etc.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

Hey... nine months of pregnancy and giving birth have to count for something, right?

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

Typical woman... thinking that just because men seem to appreciate what they see more, that’s all they care about in sex. :p

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

So... are you saying that men are more attentive to / appreciative of these sort of details, or they aren’t?

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[digitig]

I'm not afraid my boss will find out... I'm worried my mother will.

I doubt your (or anyone's) mother would be fazed. She got to be your mother somehow, remember.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

Hey... nine months of pregnancy and giving birth have to count for something, right?

Yes. Your mom popped out a smart geek boy. We need more of those in the world. They make excellent friends on the whole, and they don't scream and run away when I invite them over to hang out with a bunch of my female friends. :)

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

you're still not biologically a girl. stop trying to impress everyone with how much you represent the "average woman"; it's deceptive, at the very least.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[timeOday]

Your hands are also controlled by your brain and you don't have any trouble controlling those during work... do you?

Ultimately this is just disintermediation - replacing nerves, muscles, and keyboard with a different type of transducer. Arguably the computer then becomes part of your body, though there is little point debating definitions.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

As long as they aren’t all lesbians, or at least don’t mind switch hitting now and then...

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[mcgrew]

And I fail to see why this is a problem only for men

The media tell us that men are sex-starved pigs and women are little angels. Since the first part is true, they assume the second is as well. Until, of course, you run across a (usually drunk) woman who doesn't care that you know she's a sex-starved pig, too, and that she's no different from the other women she knows.

There's a double standard here that has stood since antiquity (with the exception of the 1970s) that says that women who like sex are sluts, while men who don't are woosies or in some way definitely wierd.

That changed in the seventies when abortion was legal, birth control was cheap and effective, and there were no incurable deadly STDs. The word "slut" lost all meaning, I'm sure a lot of prostitutes went broke, and a woman would walk up to a strange man in a bar with a casual "wanna fuck?"

Alas, it ended when AIDS came around and women who like sex are once again considered "sluts". Personally, I like so-called "sluts".

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[mcgrew]

Men are more attuned to sight, women are more attuned to touch. Here's a hint -- a gentle back rub can often lead to intercourse.

And, in our species (unlike many species of birds) "pretty" is a desirable trait for females, while "strong" is a desirable trait for males. It's hard to look strong and manly when you're wearing lipstick and eye shadow.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

Typical woman... thinking that just because men seem to appreciate what they see more, that's all they care about in sex. :p

Well, not all men.. but that one at least. :\

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems kind of backwards... I've reached the point in my keyboarding skills that I think the word and my fingers struggle to catch up; I don't think about what letters my fingers are hitting; my muscle memory just knows where to hit the keyboard when I'm thinking of a word. I'm assuming that if I tried this with the mental version, I might have the issues people are joking about -- except that the level of intent is higher for typing than for reflective thinking; I'm sure that the feedback loop is MUCH stronger (although I've done no studies to test it). A bit of calibration should be able to let you set the correct threshold though.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

They make excellent friends on the whole, and they don't scream and run away when I invite them over to hang out with a bunch of my female friends. :)

Why the hell would we scream or run away ? When meeting a lesbian for the first time, I think most guy's thoughts run along the lines of "can we watch ?".

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Beardo the Bearded]

Nope, just standard /. goatse references.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[mindbrane]

Another tick in this column is the huge market for makeup, sexy clothes, etc., for women; not so much for men. It would seem that men are looking specifically for visual stimulation on a level that women are not. And that women know it, because they certainly buy this stuff in large enough quantities without demanding comparable "peacock" performance from the male population

My ex made a remark on an evening we were playing dress up for some overblown event. She said women don't dress for men, they dress for other women. I don't think it's necessarily true for single women on a date with some guy they're interested in but I do think many women are engaged in a fashion war with their peers and in that war we men are just collateral damage.

just my loose change.

It's interesting to watch our species struggle with it's animal nature, especially our sexual nature. Is it a form of engineered evolution implemented at a cultural level? Or are we just kidding ourselves? Fun tho'

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[clone53421]

I’m fine with seeing the colon, but entering it is something I’ll leave for the men in rubber gloves.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[falckon]

People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D

Is this a recurrence relation? Accidents in cars cause people ... more people in cars to cause more accidents.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[BrokenHalo]

What would the implications be if the twitter account was hacked?

Absolutely nothing, since Twitter is just a place where twats blather their vacuous crap into the void.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Jason Levine]

In my experience, a gentle back rub leads to my wife falling asleep. Maybe that's just the reaction you get after the sleep deprivation that goes along with having 2 kids.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I really boobies don't know boobies what you are boobies talking about. boobies

If I read TFA correctly it doesn't quite work like this. In fact the whole idea is not workable as stated in the article. Humans don't visualize concepts as individual letters, but entire words. That is how the trick of scrambling letters and still being able to read the text works.

http://www.hakank.org/reading_scrambled_words/r_words.cgi?submit=OK&num_begin_chars=2&num_end_chars=2&text=According+to+a+research+at+an+english+university%2C+it+doesn't+matter+in+what+order+the+letters+in+a+word+are%2C+the+only+important+thing+is+that+first+and+last+letter+is+at+the+right+place.+The+rest+can+be+a+total+mess+and+you+can+still+read+it+without+problem.+This+is+because+we+do+not+read+every+letter+by+itself+but+the+word+as+a+whole.+Cheerio.

Just try typing something by visualizing each individual letter of each word, it is somewhat difficult and time consuming isn't it? In order for this to become practical, entire words would have to be scanned in and coded in a contextual manner (to avoid IBM's classic "Please write to Mrs. Wright right now" problem).

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGkmx0hzJLijEBGl9XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByamR1NnFoBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDNgRjb2xvA3NrMQR2dGlkAw--/SIG=14bdg6avh/EXP=1261689076/**http%3A//www.abilitynet.org.uk/content/factsheets/pdfs/Voice%2520Recognition%2520for%2520Blind%2520Computer%2520Users.pdf

This is still not not working 100% for voice recognition, so the computer AI technology is not quite there yet to make this practical. Besides, while "brain typing" might be a boon for transcribers and professional writers, I think the privacy implications would be very creepy.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[mcgrew]

As you well know, life changes drastically after marriage, and even more drastically after children are born.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I see so many females constantly swooning over this or that "hottie," then? Or is that just because they don't really know what they want or need, and will allow wealth and power to trump physical attributes in the absence of "hot-ness?"

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[umghhh]

Thought crime is becoming easier every day.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[phoenix321]

Well then we start typing Chinese. Two symbols = one "concept", grammar not included.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[fyngyrz]

She said women don't dress for men, they dress for other women.

Maybe she wouldn't be your ex if she had been motivated to dress for you, rather than them? There's a lot to be said for someone who doesn't care so much about other people, but is looking to please their partner. People who just don't care... perhaps they really just don't care. If you get my drift.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[fyngyrz]

Typical man... thinking that sex is only about what you can see.

Quick lesson for you:

Saying "men are far more visual than women are" != thinking "sex is only about what you can see"

When someone speaks about Z, they have not defined X. As long as you think that's what they're doing, you're in for a whole lot of fail.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[RobertB-DC]

I'm with you, when you say "Women make up for in detail what men do in quantity in that regard."

From my intense "research", I've found that the sites with the most male visitors are full of pictures of lots of different females, but there's nothing distinctive about *any* of them. That's the "quantity" factor.

And from a couple of decades of marriage (now ended :( ), I learned that while women may not be so interested in pretty pictures (and it's not like the male figure is "pretty" anyway), they are *very* interested in spending a long night, watching TV together, cuddling by the fire, making sweet lovin' (which bears no resemblance to anything the porn sites tout), cuddling some more, waking up in his arms, breakfast in bed... a whole *experience*, not just a fleeting image.

Only problem is that women apparently don't *want* someone who understands their needs. Otherwise, I wouldn't still be single, and I'd actually get *replies* to my plentyoffish profile. :p

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[msevior]

What is relevant here are words! There is a huge market for "romantic" novels pitched at women with very detailed sex scenes. I agree with GP it's just as likely that an embarrassing email may emerge from women :-)

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

girlintraining: And I fail to see why this is a problem only for men -- if you knew half the stuff that went through the average woman's brain you'd probably crap a few bricks.

Cite? Where's your data?

Only on fucking Slashdot.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[jmickle]

`tis a sad day when now men have to worry about sexual harassment from thoughts they keep to them self......

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[lazarusdishwasher]

What would the implications be if the twitter account was hacked?

I am not sure what the implications are with twitter, but as I understand it Firefox responds to thought as long as you are thinking in Russian.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

He married a Japanese woman after that, he hasn't seen boobies since.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

Only problem is that women apparently don't *want* someone who understands their needs. Otherwise, I wouldn't still be single, and I'd actually get *replies* to my plentyoffish profile. :p

Pulling a page from the lesbian handbook here, but it works for hetero couples too; Don't actually be bad, but look like you could be. It's the same reason horror flicks are so popular with my friends -- it's a safe kind of scare. It's the chills down the back of your spine, but you're still in control.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never seen a womens magazine then. The few bits that aren't about sex are about makeup and perfume and clothes and shit which are indirectly all about sex as well. Mens magazines are all about toys, whether guns, cars, chicks or whatever.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[lindseyp]

I'm not boobies sure I boobies get it. I didn't boobies see anything boobies in your boobies message that I boobies would have thought embarrassing boobies.

Care to enlighten cock me?

Wait.. what?

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[Dan541]

That's why smart people enter the email address LAST, especially when alcohol is involved.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[RobertB-DC]

Pulling a page from the lesbian handbook here, but it works for hetero couples too; Don't actually be bad, but look like you could be. It's the same reason horror flicks are so popular with my friends -- it's a safe kind of scare. It's the chills down the back of your spine, but you're still in control.

That's probably it... I'm a computer programmer with a stable job, safe and boring as a rock at the bottom of a valley. Maybe my newfound love of Karaoke will make me seem more dangerous. Then again, probably not -- "shameless" isn't really the same thing as "dangerous", is it?

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

Then again, probably not -- "shameless" isn't really the same thing as "dangerous", is it?

No, it isn't. Try skydiving, or a little bit of activism like writing to your congresscritters, maybe a small protest. Something to show that you're willing to take a few risks here and there -- just not so much that you look like a freak or a creep. :)

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[RobertB-DC]

Does political activism really carry the same cachet as skydiving? I guess I need to start attending those Green Party meetings again. Really -- I was running for office before family issues derailed my erstwhile campaign. I just pretty much assumed that politics was a huge turn-off. (I know that's how my ex felt!)

Thanks for giving me something to think about... in the most unexpected possible place.

Re:Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but

[girlintraining]

Does political activism really carry the same cachet as skydiving? I guess I need to start attending those Green Party meetings again. Really -- I was running for office before family issues derailed my erstwhile campaign. I just pretty much assumed that politics was a huge turn-off. (I know that's how my ex felt!)

To that degree, yes, I imagine it would be. But the same could be said for anything that consumes so much of your time you don't have much left-over for your partner. Admittedly, it works better for lesbians than hetero-couples, but it's an activity you can do with your significant other and it shows that you're not just a couch potato. Like I said, just try to show that you have some ambition in your life; Something about you that's a little edgy but not over the top. Brain storm awhile... and good luck with the ladies!

This is good?

[Wrexs0ul]

I already thought Twitter required more filtering between brain and keyboard, but now this?

Then again, who on Slashdot hasn't at least once dreamed about hands-free typing.

-Matt

Re:This is good?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be awesome for the severely paralyzed.

Re:This is good?

[MBCook]

Would it really? I realize that it can be difficult for people in some situations to type, but how is this any better than the "look at the letter on the computer screen" method?

That one doesn't require a a craniotomy and wires in your brain. In that method (or the blow in the tube method Steven Hawking uses) you could look at individual words that you may be trying to spell to speed things up (like in texting). In this method, you only get letters. To get something else, you'd have to train the computer to recognize that pattern in brain.

It's neat, but I don't think it's very useful in it's current form. Only for people who lack vision and can't see to use the other methods.

Re:This is good?

[Tekfactory]

I didn't read the article, but what kinds of speeds are they getting?

Reading Words per minute is supposed to go up when you stop subvocalizing the words as you read them. For the same reasons is thinking about writing going to be faster than typing?

Are your fingers the bottleneck? or is the speed you're thinking about the words the theorhetical top speed?

Certainly there are applications for people with disabilities, but once you acknowledge that, the next question is, is it better than the old way for non-disabled folks.

Re:This is good?

[rolfwind]

My iPhone is a good device for output (I can read nearly all the webpages I want) but is awful to input, taking up much more time to, say, making a post on /. than it would with a desktop or laptop. I don't think a miniature keyboard will fix this issue. Making the phone bigger is not an option, nor is carry around a fullsize keyboard (even those roll up flexible ones).

So this will be good for that. Though I suspect a front-side facing camera that can track your eyemovements down to the key on screen keyboard it's staring at and counting an extended blink as a type might be closer to reality.

Re:This is good?

[John Hasler]

> I already thought Twitter required more filtering between brain and
> keyboard, but now this?

It's Twitter. No need to involve the brain at all.

Re:This is good?

[smallfries]

Think of what it could do for the quality of youtube comments.... no wait.... does it come with audio feedback?

Re:This is good?

[Tekfactory]

I don't know. There might be corner cases where the person is blind or on a breathing machine, even the guy who was in a coma for 23 years but heard everything.

Wetware

[cbs4385]

Well, I suppose as long as it's a wire, I'm OK with it. I draw the line at wireless access though. I don't want anyone to be able to war-drive my frontal cortex.

Re:Wetware

[Tekfactory]

Yeah, but where is that guy who's sig says the ultimate hardware hack is to tune a health body, now he can get at the firmware too.

For slashdotters...

[hey!]

typing *without* your brain might be more convenient.

Re:For slashdotters...

[jack2000]

Get with the times, I'm doing this as we speak!

Regrettably...

[InfinityWpi]

... it turns out that they used an old AT-style connector, so you're only able to use your thoughts to type on a 386DX2/40 at best. Wuich is okay, I guess, still runs Linux.

Seriously, tho, combine this with Bluetooth, and we've got ourselves a winner. Connect to your PC, cell phone, PS3, whatever. I'll go in for the surgery as soon as it's availa... wait. Can I also move a mouse with my thoughts? Using a computer with just keys could be harsh these days.

Re:Regrettably...

[ravenshrike]

Movement would have to be remapped to the arrow keys. Thinking WASD to move would be a PITA.

Re:Regrettably...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bluetooth is a bad idea. You'd get BlueJacked, and then you'd get a BSOD. Not pretty.

Re:Regrettably...

[Culture20]

Using a computer with just keys could be harsh these days.

It's a lot easier than you think, unless you're surfing the web with lynx/links. The number of hidden clickables has risen greatly, and you have to tab through them all to get to the link you want to activate.

oh god

[darkitecture]

yes, because what we need is more twitter.

whenever i hear about groundbreaking advancements in the neurosciences, i for one automatically think about how it can improve my twitter feed.

sigh.

Re:oh god

[girlintraining]

whenever i hear about groundbreaking advancements in the neurosciences, i for one automatically think about how it can improve my twitter feed.

Well, the internet was a groundbreaking advance in information technology that has allowed both advanced physics research and 4chan posts to exist in the same medium. But that's the case with any technology -- it will be used for both really intelligent, and really stupid, purposes. A car is a wonderful advancement that allows people to get to and from work, and then get drunk and turn livingrooms into garages.

*shrug*

Re:oh god

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, because what we need is more twitter.

whenever i hear about groundbreaking advancements in the neurosciences, i for one automatically think about how it can improve my twitter feed.

sigh.

Quite true. And imagine the learning curve of not ONLY typing with your brain, but also "think-typing" using the SHIFT key.

Re:oh god

[darkitecture]

i don't disagree, but your point really doesn't have anything to do with mine.

i'm pretty sure "let's call it the internet" and "we could use it to share stupid memes" weren't uttered in the same breath.

i'm also pretty sure karl benz first thought after inventing the modern automobile wasn't "you know what, i'd really like to get shitfaced drunk and give this baby a crash test" either.

Re:oh god

[jbezorg]

Well, lets face the facts. They were really just trying to avoid mentioning the internet porn industry.

Re:oh god

[darkitecture]

actually, i was just thinking the same thing. would you be able to think "capital T" or would you somehow have to simultaneously think "hold shift key" and then "type T"?

Re:oh god

[clone53421]

If the computer was programmed to automatically follow the rules of capitalization and punctuation, you wouldn’t typically have to worry about it.

Re:oh god

[darkitecture]

if you're looking for an alternative to using your hands when you think "internet porn" and you think of this... you should get out more.

Re:oh god

[maxwell demon]

That depends on the language. For example, if you want to write in German "Ich habe in Moskau liebe Genossen" (I have dear comrades in Moscow), but the system types "Ich habe in Moskau Liebe genossen" (I've enjoyed love in Moskow), you'll certainly not like the result, especially if the recipient is your wive (who doesn't live in Moscow) :-)

Re:oh god

[clone53421]

The accent / focus would be different... if the computer could detect which word is the noun and which the adjective, it could correctly capitalize them.

Re:oh god

[girlintraining]

i don't disagree, but your point really doesn't have anything to do with mine.

You're bitching about how a really advanced technology is being used for a really stupid purpose. I was just pointing out that Twitter is hardly a unique example...

Re:oh god

[maxwell demon]

How would a system only recognizing characters figure out the accent/focus?

Re:oh god

[clone53421]

It’s a lot easier to learn sign language when you only want to memorize the alphabet.

It’s a lot easier to do speech recognition when you only have to match 26 patterns.

Spelling everything out is slow. Sign language and speech recognition have both developed beyond this limitation, and obviously that would be a major goal in the development of this technology as well.

Re:oh god

[MickyTheIdiot]

Yeah... like maybe slashdot, for instance.

Oh.. go ahead and mod it Troll. It's just a joke!

Re:oh god

[girlintraining]

Oh.. go ahead and mod it Troll. It's just a joke!

+1, Adorable.

Re:oh god

[clone53421]

i'm pretty sure "let's call it the internet" and "we could use it to share stupid memes" weren't uttered in the same breath.

No, and the guy who invented potato chips didn’t plan on them becoming a major junk-food item either... but I’m glad he did, ’cause I like them.

Re:oh god

[Jason Levine]

And Twitter, like web forums, chat rooms or any other form of information transport on the Internet, is no different. It can be used for disseminating important information (like info about a terrorist attack in Mumbai), information that might be important to a select few (like updates to family and friends) or information that is really of no use to anyone (the stereotypical "I just used the toilet" tweets). Unfortunately, people who don't know anything about Twitter tend to focus on the latter group and claim that all of Twitter is useless. You might as well look at a few pages on the Web and claim that it is only a mechanism for viewing porn. (And, yes, I know.)

Re:oh god

[Benzido]

People who bitch about how stupid twitter is Do Not Get Twitter. Twitter is not for broadcasting the fact that you're on the toilet. It's for disseminating news (and yes, this includes advertising and PR) more quickly than any other medium, ever. Twitter is quickly obsoleting one particular hook of 24-hour cable news networks: the ability to be the first to report a major event.

Re:oh god

[jbezorg]

... you should get out more.

With less than 48 hours in the Christmas shopping season!? Are you insane or a sadist? Perhaps both because the debauchery I proposed pales in comparison to the malice you wish upon me.

Re:oh god

[rantingkitten]

Oh please. Twitter has never been used to convey useful information. Everyone likes to point at the Iranian election fiasco, or things like the Mumbai situation you just linked, but that's nonsense. The "tweets" amount to little more than "Situation is bad. Everyone is fighting." They tell you absolutely nothing of value. You may be able to point to one or two examples where something of use was said, but that would be one or two instances in a sea of several hundred thousand instances PER DAY of absolutely pure garbage.

Your point about how the web at large is also full of nonsense is not applicable. It's true, but the signal-to-noise ratio is much, much, much worse at twitter.. and considering how absurd the web is, that's really saying something.

My point is that twitter is basically without any redeeming value at all, and pointing out how someone used it to gripe about civil unrest in their part of the world is absurd since the gripes really never amount to anything more significant than "this sucks" and "total chaos".

Twitter is the answer to a question nobody asked; it's a solution looking for a problem. Attempting to defend it makes you look like, well, a twit.

Re:oh god

[Jason Levine]

The Mumbai attack tweets were more than just "situation bad, people fighting." Here's the old Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/mumbaiattack You're going to tell me that "Hi jacked police vehicle had terrorists firing on innocent citizens and drove around Mumbai. No reports if have been apprehended" didn't contain *ANY* useful information? What about "Jewish and Israeli areas seeing concentrated attacks" or "JJ Hospital in need blood ASAP"?

Like I said before, any information medium is going to have it's garbage and it's useful content. In fact, the garbage/useful content distinction will be different for each person. You might not care about information for dads, but I find tweets about such items very helpful. Perhaps you're a gamer and would find links to articles about new video games very useful even though I wouldn't be too interested in them.

I have an (honest) question for you. Have you ever actually used Twitter? And by "used" it, I don't mean glanced at Twitter's Public Timeline for a few seconds. The Public Timeline is the equivalent of getting a live feed of every blog post going live and every message board comment being posted. Of course 90%+ won't interest you. That's why you choose your followers carefully so you're more likely to get incoming messages that interest you. No, Twitter isn't going to be for everyone, but it just seems unfair to condemn a communications method and everyone who uses it simply because you don't see a use for it for you.

Re:oh god

[rantingkitten]

Like I said before, any information medium is going to have it's garbage and it's useful content.

That's obvious. The problem is that twitter is really like reading the graffiti on a bathroom wall. It's random nobodies spewing mostly gibberish. "Call Kate for a good time" may be useful information to someone. It may even be factual. But you have absolutely no idea who said it or if it's true.

Perhaps you're a gamer and would find links to articles about new video games very useful even though I wouldn't be too interested in them.

"Bioshock is the bestest game ever!" "Guys nobody buy Fallout it sucks lol http://bit.ly/273hd"

Yeah, real useful.

If I want information on games, or sports, or the attacks on Mumbai, I'll visit news sites or forums where there's some semblence of coherency and cohesion to the information. And more than that, I can get actual details. You illustrate that quite nicely:

You're going to tell me that "Hi jacked police vehicle had terrorists firing on innocent citizens and drove around Mumbai. No reports if have been apprehended" didn't contain *ANY* useful information?

Yes, I'm going to tell you that. Some guy says that some vehicle, somewhere, had terrorists. Fascinating. Oh, and he adds that he doesn't know if they've been caught. You know, I could have told you that and I wasn't even there. And since you have no idea who I am, my information is about as reliable as his, since you have no idea who he is either.

I don't see how that is functionally any different from "Situation bad, people are fighting," really. There's no context, no accountability, no details, and no actual information beyond some guy claiming that bad guys are driving around shooting. That's not information. That's nonsense. You don't even know where this guy is allegedly getting his information. Was he there? Did he see it? Or he just overheard someone talking about it? Who knows?

Frankly, from looking at that, it seems like he was just "tweeting" what he was hearing on the news. Well, I can turn on the news just as easily as he can.

Everything there was completely devoid of context, and almost completely devoid of information. "more fires". "heard more explosions". "reports of terrorists". "police on the scene".

This tells me nothing. It's aimless rambling from some unknown guy with unknown sources, and quite honestly, reading that gave me zero insight into what was going on in Mumbai beyond a vague sense that, well, the situation was bad and lots of people were fighting. At a hotel, it seems.

Historians use something like Anne Frank's diary to better understand the plight and turmoil of people who lived through that era, because it contained actual information, details, and most of all, context. Do you really think that, decades from now, someone's going to be able to sift through the avalanche of garbage on twitter and come out with a better understanding of the problems in Mumbai because some anonymous twit said that he heard there were terrorists in police cars, or that hospitals need blood?

it just seems unfair to condemn a communications method and everyone who uses it simply because you don't see a use for it for you.

My point is that I have yet to see a use for it for anyone, even when people like you earnestly try to rationalise it. You just stepped up to the plate and the best examples you could find were "I heard someone's driving around shooting" and "Newsflash, hospitals could use more blood."

Having seen that, and countless other examples of the allegedly "useful" information being disseminated on twitter, I've concluded that twitter, as a medium, is abjectly worthless and of no real value to anyone, nor will it ever be. That may sound like a stubborn, heavy-handed, and sweeping conclusion, but I stand by it. It is all vapid, mindless drivel of barely-coherent sentence fragments. It's complete trash.

End of rant.

I'll be out of the office a week from Tuesday...

[sprior]

Got a little elective brain surgery scheduled...

Brilliant

[MBCook]

Amazing. Why there are no(*) downsides at all! This will sweep the world!

Soon we will all use this, and the keyboard will be dead. Imagine what computers could look like without the needing keyboard. Almost like... tablets of some kind. We'll call them "portable blackboard computers".

(*) Only known downsides:

• Slow
• Needs craniotomy
• Needs lame wool cap to keep shaved head warm
• Slow
• Only handles 36 characters
• Doesn't zap you for using texting shorthand

Re:Brilliant

[Arthur Grumbine]

Although I haven't RTFA, it seems likely that they will be able to, eventually, move from being able to interpret 26 characters to being able to interpret the top 1000 most commonly used words. Then all the words in the person's vocabulary. Then all the most common basic grammatical constructions (e.g. verb conjugations, etc), then sentence fragments, then sentences.

The craniotomy may be needed for a very long time (at least to get the best accuracy/speed), but if the craniotomy procedure became safe/cheap enough, I could definitely see this becoming one of the pioneering mainstream cybernetics - especially if/when it becomes possible to transmit faster than average speaking/typing (the fastest typers may not want it, but they're, by definition, a minority).

Re:Brilliant

[Yvanhoe]

Hail for the cyberbrain !

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

[Tekfactory]

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains. The stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

And Electrodes in the brain.

Right...

It is by will and electrodes in my brain I set my mind in motion.

Re:It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that's just from the movie, right?

Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't think 120WPM, but I can sure type it.

Re:Because...

[Arthur Grumbine]

I can't think 120WPM, but I can sure type it.

Then, at your fastest, you must be typing things that you haven't put any thought into. Thus - your post.

Re:Because...

[mcgrew]

You misspelled "typo".

Re:I'll be out of the office a week from Tuesday..

[Galestar]

Please direct me to your surgeon, I would like to schedule something for Wednesday

If you thought Twitter was bad now...

[MrCrassic]

In addition to the ability to “mind read” vowels, consonants, and individual letters, brain wave applications also include algorithms to turn brain waves into music and even “tweeting” (using the popular Twitter Internet application) by thought alone.

Expect to see millions of tweets saying, "I'm tweeting about what I'm thinking of tweeting next!" In succession. For a week. And then there's Music Monday, Thinking Tuesday, and Lord knows what else...

Re:If you thought Twitter was bad now...

[zero0ne]

Whacking Wednesday
Twittering Thursday
Phishing Friday
Searching Saturday

Re:If you thought Twitter was bad now...

[maxwell demon]

Slashdotting Sunday.

Re:If you thought Twitter was bad now...

[MickyTheIdiot]

the (lack of) coherent thought in the trending topics will be even worse.

Re:If you thought Twitter was bad now...

[Locke2005]

Lord knows what else... Twitter Shitter Saturday...

Very interesting

[jocabergs]

I'm curious as to whether or not this will be able to help patients with locked in disorder. Recently in the news there was an story about a man who had been "locked-in", unable to communicate with others for nearly 20 years. The Science-Based Medicine blog did a big write up of this story (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3122) and some of the inherent problems with the way in which they made contact with the patient "facilitated communication". If the accuracy rate is truly as good as claimed this could really be a huge help for individuals who are otherwise unable to communicate with the outside world, a considerably step up from the blink once for yes, twice for no based communication standard. (though if you knew binary code you could be a much more effective blinker)

Re:Very interesting

[Thumper_SVX]

I thought the same thing myself; the "Facilitated Communication" has been slammed in court on more than one occasion because it became rapidly quite clear that the facilitator was the one doing the actual communication, not the poor schmo in the wheelchair. Hell, I know if I had true locked-in syndrome then I'd love to have something like this so I can at least have a hope of communicating with the outside world.

Re:Very interesting

[jfengel]

I find this story very perplexing. The Science-Based Medicine article claims that they were getting yes-no answers from him using a toe he could control, but other sources don't seem to mention that part.

If it's true, it should be easy enough to ask, "So, is this facilitated communication actually any good, or just a load of hooey?" and get a direct, unfacilitated answer. If he gives an unambiguous yes, then FC is validated and you get the rest out that way.

From what I've heard the FC seems extremely dubious, in this case as in all of the others. The inconsistencies in the story contribute to my wariness.

Re:Very interesting

[mcgrew]

Like Captain Pike? Personally, I'd rather be dead.

Re:Very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Captain Pike? Personally, I'd rather be dead.

And with this tech you could tell someone like me who is happy to accomodate. Unless you'd rather whine about rather being dead than actually being dead.

Thinking about letters?

[SpeedyDX]

I only speak for myself here, but it seems like thinking about letters is actually harder than typing on a keyboard. I don't really think about what letters I'm pressing when I type, I just think of the words and the vast majority of the time, it's just muscle memory doing its thing. Perhaps for novel words or words that I don't quite remember how to spell, I'll think of the letters individually. Sounds like more trouble than it's worth.

Further, it's not entirely clear that our cognitive capacities reside solely in our brain. The rest of our body could have a role to play in cognition. It could be the case that when we're typing, a big part of our typing cognitive process actually depends on our body executing typing actions. For more info, see Embodied Embedded Cognition, Enactivism, and other related philosophy of mind or AI theories.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[clone53421]

I would imagine that their hope is to eventually improve the technology to the point where it can recognise not just single letters but entire words and sentences.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[Aladrin]

On the other hand, the first time you tried to type was a lot of work, too. There's nothing saying that there isn't a way to get good at typing like this... Nobody has even tried yet.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[radtea]

The rest of our body could have a role to play in cognition.

It cracks me up that AI people are just getting around to noticing this. I guess they've never ridden a bicycle, threaded a needle, or done any of the myriad other complex tasks that require intelligence in the fingers or other parts of the body: the processing power may be in the brain, but a huge amount of the work is being done via complex multi-sensorial feedback from the whole body.

It's also a little weird that all of these "do X with JUST your brain" stories have statements like this: "people with electrodes in their brains can 'type' using just their minds."

That's like saying, "People who are in automobiles can increase their speed by just flexing their toes." Sure they can, so long as they have a huge complex machine doing the work that the rest of the body would normally do.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[SirGarlon]

I only speak for myself here, but it seems like thinking about letters is actually harder than typing on a keyboard.

This is probably true for anyone who has use of at least one functional limb. Similarly, typing by dictation is easier for anyone who can speak. For people who have neither the use of a limb nor speech (total paralysis for example), typing with brain waves may be an attractive interface.

Though the article's recorded rate of "up to" 8 characters per minute means it will be quite a while before we see the next Great American Novel come out of a neurology ward.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[Rigrig]

it seems like thinking about letters is actually harder than typing on a keyboard.

You need a keyboard though, thinking about letters might be more convenient than typing them into something like a mobile phone.

I don't really think about what letters I'm pressing when I type, I just think of the words and the vast majority of the time, it's just muscle memory doing its thing.

I could imagine something similar happening while using this, it just cuts out the letter-to-key-translation and finger-movement neurons.

Not that I'd sign up for having my head opened up now though(I'll wait till they can integrate those electrodes into my tinfoil hat), but it sound like good news for disabled people.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you think the memory from 'muscle memory' resides?

Re:Thinking about letters?

[SpeedyDX]

This actually comes really close to a pretty recent argument against brain-in-a-vat thought experiments. Envatted brain thought experiments try to illustrate that cognition resides solely in the brain. However, if you really think about the experiment carefully, an envatted brain would require something so similar to a body that it could be said to be a surrogate body. This article written by a Philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, Evan Thompson, explains this argument in much greater detail.

The take-home is that you're exactly right. Complex feedback loops between brain and body seem to play a huge functional role in cognition. So any "do X only with brain waves" not only fails to capture the fact that there is a very complicated mechanism in place to actually capture the brain waves, but it also misses the point in that doing things with just your brain is HARDER than doing it with your body, because you are deprived of the input required for those brain-body feedback loops.

If this typing experiment is implemented, you would have to put a keyboard layout on the screen or at least SOMEWHERE so it can provide feedback input. Without that keyboard (either on-screen or elsewhere) providing input for feedback, your cognitive capacities are actually severely hindered.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

That's a good point that I think a lot of people miss when it comes to new interfacing technology. Sure, it takes some getting used to, and at first, it's probably going to suck and you are going to want to go back to the old, 'better' way of doing things. However, given consistent use and a bit of patience our minds and bodies are remarkable at learning new interfaces. Think about the the first time you drove a stick shift. You probably popped the clutch a few times and squealed some tires and killed the engine once or twice. However, after a month or two getting a feel for the clutch everyday while driving, you begin to master the motions and, eventually, working the clutch becomes an art form in and of itself.

This is one of the underlying principles of Kung-Fu. Through disciplined, consistent repetition, our bodies develop habits all of our own. Martial arts mastery comes when your body has ritualized so many action-reaction combinations that you can start combining them in new, more inventive, more powerful ways. The same thing goes for an editor like vi. Eventually, you master enough key strokes that you don't even need a mouse anymore. The same thing happened with typing when the keyboard first came about and, now, it is happening again with mobile platform keyboards (I can text with two thumbs as fast as I could type with two hands three years ago).

My bet would be that, as these neuroscience interfaces develop with the future, our 'mental-fu' will start to develop just like the Kung-Fu we practice to learn any number of physical interfaces and actions. Before you know it, we may be living in a world where our very wills could be pitted against one another in mental show downs. I, for one, welcome the idea of interfaces that force humanity to start mastering and disciplining its own mental habits on a wide-scale.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[ArsonSmith]

I s n apostrophe t space t h a t space h o w space e v e r y o n e space t h i n k s questionmark

Re:Thinking about letters?

[SpeedyDX]

True enough. I made a reply to one of your sibling posts that relates to this. If this technology were to be implemented, it would also require something to provide input for your normal brain-body feedback loops in order to be functionally effective. Without those feedback loops, your cognition in typing may be severely impaired, because you're essentially taking away (actually making invisible) the interface through which you communicate with your environment.

Try, for example, to type on an imaginary keyboard with your fingers in the air. For me, and for most people who are adept at typing I would imagine, it's much more difficult to do so than to type at an actual keyboard. That's because we're taking away the tactile input for the feedback loop, and thus taking away a major part of the cognitive process for typing.

Now of course this technology isn't directly analogous to typing. You're actually thinking of letters. So try to imagine just thinking of letters instead of typing. It's a lot slower, isn't it? You have to think of the words, then you have to think about how you spell it, and then you think about the actual letters themselves. A much more effective technology would be one that can read your brainwave patterns in a way that it can read what WORDS you're thinking about. This letter-based tech is an important stepping stone towards a word-based tech. But even then, I'm somewhat sceptical of how well it would work without providing sufficient input for your brain-body feedback loops which are a big part of your cognitive capacities.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[maxwell demon]

Indeed, I also can type purely by using my mind. I just think what I want to type, and my fingers type it. I don't have to think about which muscles to activate in which sequence, I don't even have to think about muscles, or about nerve pulses, or anything like that. I don't even explicitly command my fingers to press keys. I use my mind, and my body just does what I want.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[commodore73]

> On the other hand

I think you mean "from the other lobe"

Re:Thinking about letters?

[Nos.]

My thought exactly. There are plenty of medical conditions that prevent people from typing in any meaningful way. My two sons both have duchenne muscular dystrophy, and likely, in the future, won't have the strength to type, yet their brains will still be fully functional. Something like this may give them the opportunity to still be productive later in their lives.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Obligatory xkcd comic on the power of editing with non-standard interfaces:

        http://xkcd.com/378/

Re:Thinking about letters?

[mcgrew]

Further, it's not entirely clear that our cognitive capacities reside solely in our brain.

It's entirely clear that cognitive capacities don't reside solely in the brain, as anyone who has ever seen a decapitated chicken can attest. The head will lay on the chopping block blinking and opening and closing its beak while the body runs away until it collapses from lack of blood.

Reflexive actions need no input from the brain, as anyone who has ever hit thair crazy bone can attest.

If I'm trying to think of a phone number, it's always easier to let my fingers remember.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[Aladrin]

In the current iteration, that's true. But then, in the first iteration of the typewriter, the keys would often get jammed and slow you down. As technology improved, so did the interface.

That may mean that it accepts whole words, or it may mean that there is some kind of 'muscle memory' that you will use when 'mind typing' to type the individual letters without really specifically thinking about each letter in sequence. The same way you type.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[pwfffff]

Saying you need 'brain-body feedback loops' to think about words is just silly. You're absolutely right that for typing the body requires certain kinds of feedback from the keyboard, but this has to do with keeping your proprioception up to date with where your fingers actually are, and is not necessary for the formation of words in your brain. You can't type in the air, because in order to know which direction to twitch your finger, you must first know where it is, and that location is easily lost when your fingers are just flopping about with no solid reference point.

So, the current system is basically: think of word -> generate muscle stimulus -> adapt stimulus based on current position versus memorized one -> stimulate muscles -> update current finger position. Feedback definitely necessary.

The mind-reading system would be: think of word -> generate muscle stimulus -> !!! machine detects muscle stimulus !!! -> cancel stimulus 'cause you didn't want to move your fingers anyways.

In the article the process is like: see letter in box -> record stimulus -> think of letter in box, generating the same stimulus -> !!! machine detects stimulus !!!.

No feedback is necessary, because you're not actively manipulating the world. Sure, your thoughts will enact changes on the screen, but you won't have to adapt the way you think every time the screen changes. Feedback would only be necessary if, say, the letter associated with each box changed every time you thought of it.

A pretty good analogy would be music. I doubt the best pianist in the world could play on an 'air keyboard', yet it's clearly possible to play/compose music in your head. Hell, lots of times the music gets STUCK in your head! Where's the feedback loop in that cognitive capacity?

tl;dr
Feedback is only necessary because of the imperfect translation between thoughts and actions: brain configuration X is the word 'puppy', but brain configuration Y is the one that makes your hand write it, and Y will never be the same; it relies on feedback. When you can directly read the thoughts the translation can be perfect from the start: brain configuration X is the word 'puppy', no changes or adjustments necessary.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[pwfffff]

I closed my eyes and thought of this whole post before typing it. Every word. Where was the feedback? Are you suggesting that this post only existed in my head because I had a keyboard in front of me? Are you suggesting that, had my keyboard been in another room, my brain would no longer have generated these thoughts? Or are you suggesting that these thoughts, generated sans feedback, would be unreadable by this machine until a keyboard was brought near me? Are you suggesting that a person with no hands, and thus no keyboard-feedback capabilities, can have no word-like thoughts? Why are you jumping from 'our brain requires input to function' (no shit, Sherlock) to 'our brain must receive input from a keyboard to think about words'?

Re:Thinking about letters?

[Anomalyst]

> On the other hand
I think you mean "from the other lobe"

Or perhaps "in the gripping lobe"?
ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grirel=url2html-21809http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gri>pping_hand

Re:Thinking about letters?

[skeenan]

Kind of like switching to dvorak. I wanted to switch for the first 3 weeks... but after a couple months, I could type about 30% faster that before

Re:Thinking about letters?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, the first time you tried to type was a lot of work, too. There's nothing saying that there isn't a way to get good at typing like this... Nobody has even tried yet.

Horseshit, this has been discussed several times on slashdot. There are multiple companies already doing research, and there are even a couple with consumer level devices that will hit shelves in the next year. All using head-cap tech, not requiring surgery, etc.

It's not that big a deal- this isn't reading your mind, thoughts, desires, etc. Essentially what it's doing is keying off the pattern of activity that your brain generates when it's firing the electrical impulse down your nerves. It's closer to reading the electrical signals from your nerves than anything.. the difference being it's picking up on it just before it sends them. So with a little feedback training the test subjects were quickly able to train themselves AND the software so they didn't need to move their muscles. They don't "just think" about moving them, although laymen might describe it as such.
Test subjects have been able, after working with programmers, training themselves, and the software, to be able to generate the right pattern in their brain consistently so the computer can pick up on it.

So when someone sits down for the first time with one of these, it goes something like this:-
1. First you have to train the software to the specific user. This is done by passively monitoring as the user types on a normal keyboard.
2. Once the software has been trained enough, the keyboard is then removed, and the user types on a template. This allows the user to start learning how to do it without the keyboard.
3. After a surprisingly short period, the user will learn to generate the proper pattern that the computer is expecting, and can stop actually moving his fingers.

Voila, typing by "thought".

The next step, which is also not tough for the humans to learn to do, is to move from individual letters to words. Same concept- the user trains himself to generate the same pattern every time he types a complete word, the computer learns this pattern, and then the user can simply generate the pattern for the word instead of the individual letters. This can, of course, be extended to the concept of any kind of "macro" concept.

Oh, and this is all being done without the use of surgical implants, did I mention that? The difficulty right now is twofold- the speed and accuracy of detection.

I'd post citations but there's this nifty thing called Google that you can use to research this, from the early studies out of Duke University with the monkeys through present.

Re:Thinking about letters?

[noidentity]

So the question is whether this device detects what letter the people are thinking of, or merely some arbitrary neural firings. If it's the latter, then you can probably make it into a habit. Buf it you have to think of each letter, how can you ever speed that up? You wouldn't ever be able to do anything shorthand, because this device would be wired up to the wrong thing.

ALS

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume this type of technology could be VERY beneficial to those individuals that suffer from ALS, or would the condition cause some sort of interference with the brain's patterns?

Paralysis, we've got an app for that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, when will this happen!

"I can type to you with my brain"

[Chris Mattern]

Nope. Just doesn't have the same impact.

Re:"I can type to you with my brain"

[Anonymous Coward]

And my nose bleeds...

Re:I'll be out of the office a week from Tuesday..

[sprior]

I found his ad on http://thereifixedit.com/ I'm sure it'll be fine.

Remember the movie "What Women Want"?

[judolphin]

We'll be about 3 steps away from that if this comes through. I don't know about you, but personally, I'm wary of a computer being able to read my thoughts... Though it would be amazing for disabled people.

Re:Remember the movie "What Women Want"?

[pwfffff]

We can already estimate things like sexual attraction from brain readings. The problem is getting them to implant electrodes in their skull to facilitate your flirting...

I think it would be too slow

[erroneus]

I don't know about "normal people" but for me, if I had to think of each letter, I would probably forget what I was thinking in the first place. When I type, I simply think of the words I want to say and they come out through my finger movements. So, if this technique of mind reading becomes more advanced and entire words can be recognized, then we would have something useful.

Re:I think it would be too slow

[clone53421]

if I had to think of each letter, I would probably forget what I was thinking in the first place

You could write it down so you won’t forget it...

Re:I think it would be too slow

[canajin56]

You're confusing thinking about letters, with actively sounding out one letter at a time in your mind. You really think that when you're typing, you don't think about what letters you're pushing?

Re:I think it would be too slow

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right, it should be words, not letters. To make it more universal and useful, if they can read brain waves, it should record word or thought glyphs. The thought patterns could then be translated into any of several languages, or perhaps the glyphs could be used directly. The output could be adapted to idioms or preferred slang. If this thing can read your brain, it shouldn't be wasted on clumsy spellings.

Re:I think it would be too slow

[erroneus]

As I said, I am probably not a "normal person." The fact is, when I am typing, I do think of words and not letters. Many times, I am writing and my thoughts drift and my typing reflects what I am thinking at the moment. For some, analyzing errors that people make are as much of a fingerprint as anything else they do. In my case, it is especially true. Most of my "typos" aren't missed keys, but are instead missed thoughts. To carry this further, I find that I type much better when I am tired than when I am active and energetic. The reason for this? My guess is that my thoughts are slower and more ordered and deliberate when I am tired -- when not tired, my thoughts are free flowing and increasingly more random.

Characters, not words...

[gzearfoss]

Though it's great for people with no other means of communication, there are two main obstacles I see for everyday use: Speed, and words.
Speed: "I've seen people do up to eight characters per minute," Wilson says. Nothing else needs to be said.
Words: When I type, I don't think about typing individual letters, so much as I think about typing the words in the sentence. I'm no neuroscientist, but I would wager that this doesn't trigger the part of the brain that they're reading the letters from - or if it does, it triggers them too quickly to be read.

In other words, it's a great step in technology, and it's wonderful for those who need to use it, but I don't see it becoming practical for everyday use in the near future.

This is your brain typing.

[Ukab the Great]

Th1whkjahds isaasdk yourasdfr brainalskdf typingalskjd onasd druggs3s.

Any questions?

Re:This is your brain typing.

[clone53421]

Yes. Where can I get some?

Re:This is your brain typing.

[Locke2005]

The sad thing is, that post was more intelligible than most slashdot posts...

Letters, not words

[gmuslera]

For normal people could be slower than typing. You should think on a letter, and for long enough. Alone letters usually dont have associations that could make very complex determining in which one is thinking,

Still pretty slow

[musicalmicah]

The videos I've seen of this make it look very tedious. The patients seemed to be brain-typing around 1 character every few seconds. I'll be excited when I can use my brain to output to a computer at over 100 wpm... and without invasive surgery, for that matter!

Yeah...

[hesaigo999ca]

Is there such a thing as a sticky key when you are thinking about it?
Youuuuuuuuu do know what I am talking abouuuuuuuuuuut, right?

Re:Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes...it's a seizure.

Re:Yeah...

[clone53421]

This was so much funnier when I thought that by “sticky” you meant... um... something else.

Re:Yeah...

[ArsonSmith]

if you used your brain to type on a key board I would think they'd all get sticky.

ewww, brain goo on the keyboard

Re:Yeah...

[hesaigo999ca]

Attention, while using our new virtual keyboard please refrain from thinking about p0rn
as we have noticed strange and erratic behavior with the cursor,
moving back and forth repeatedly as in a somewhat recognizable pattern.

Re:Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened when canadians say about (read: aboot)? I wonder if thier brain thinks of the preposition/adverb about or just pictures a boot.

Twitter

[natespizer]

God, do we have to mention twitter interoperability with every possible thing that comes out. So many best things to do with this technology. Instead we will get constant updates on your bowel status

frist past

[Hognoxious]

It's quate slow and not fery reliaple.

ad;giajdgadga

[Anonymous Coward]

a;dlgijaopuq495u290ga;lkfnhasfp09u8tq34

Actually, I find the act of typing helpful.

[BaronHethorSamedi]

I think between the time I think of something to type, and the time I use my fingers to put it on the screen, I'm forced to focus a little more to put my thought into a communicable form that will make sense to someone else.

And really, actually having to think of each individual letter (something my brain sends to my fingers in a fairly automatic fashion) seems like more effort to me than just pushing a button and having the letter pop up on the screen.

And as to making surgical incisions in my skull to lay sheets of electrodes on my brain, well...I'll stick with my keyboard.

Useful for for some...

[sycodon]

A related breakthrough

FTFA

"By implanting an electrode into the brain of a person with locked-in syndrome, scientists have demonstrated how to wirelessly transmit neural signals to a speech synthesizer. The "thought-to-speech" process takes about 50 milliseconds - the same amount of time for a non-paralyzed, neurologically intact person to speak their thoughts. The study marks the first successful demonstration of a permanently installed, wireless implant for real-time control of an external device."

It's just a few vowels at the moment, but still...

Oh Great...

[cdoggyd]

...Now my wife will misspell every word in the dictionary even faster.

Re:Oh Great...

[ChrisMP1]

She must love you...

Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer...

[kvap]

Can brainwaves have accents or slurring?

I'd be a bit skeptical considering how speech recognition has worked out: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123221217782777472#

I'm just saying...

Re:Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer...

[HTH NE1]

Can brainwaves have accents or slurring?

That depends if you can think of words without pronouncing them in your head. When someone says, "Think of the letter W," do you think about hearing or saying "W" or pronouncing a "W"? think about the shape of a "W"? or do you think about the concept of a "W"? what "W" means to you? how it makes you feel? it's associations to certain people?

If they're only getting under 2 words a minute, they're probably having people think hard about saying the letter. So they're basically monitoring speech patterns and not deeper thoughts.

The depiction on TV and in movies of people having constant internal monologues of their thoughts makes no sense to me. Who constantly thinks in words? That would drive me insane!

Lorien's line in Babylon 5, "You can't create language without thought, and you can't conceive a thought without language," to me, is bullshit. I may not be able to communicate a thought to you without using language, but I surely can have a thought without using language, such as imagining Bester in a condition which is anatomically impossible.

"Why bother" ?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Because of this:
a sheet of electrodes laid directly on the surface of the brain after a surgical incision into the skull

You go first.

Re:"Why bother" ?

[ceoyoyo]

If the craniotomy doesn't turn you off, the constant risk of infection should. If that STILL doesn't do it, you have to get the whole thing redone after a while because the brain builds scar tissue around the electrodes, eventually cutting them off.

Piracy Problems

[lostandthedamned]

How long before U have to declare that i've had this sort of surgery before going into a bookshop?
If I can go in, take a book off the shelf, take it to the instore coffee shop and read it into my phone by bluetooth with one of these then i'm set.

Re:Piracy Problems

[Locke2005]

Oh shit... looks like another "analog hole" the RIAA and MPAA are gonna have to close!

random brainwaves?

[tomhath]

What they've found here is that they can map certain patterns of brainwaves to known facts when they are expecting one of a small set of patterns at a specific time. There are obvious applications for this with people who can't communicate any other way, but beyond that they fall into the same trap AI and speech recognition is already in. Picking out a letter, word, or thought from all the other noise inside a person's head has to be orders of magnitude more difficult that understanding spoken text.

Reminds me of an old joke:

Fortune Teller: No

Interviewer: Is it true that you can actually read a person's mind?

Hmmm

[Frigo]

8u99sss9 gh56 bv8ur 5t bv29 rtjk wa gtfghujzhhjnmuuuuuuu

I don't think it works.
I might be doing it wrong though.

Workplace Awkwardness

[palmerj3]

Customer service emails will be so much more honest now.
"Yes, you raging fucktard, it needs to be plugged in first! Shit fuckin piss how do I delete this shit?! Control, Alt, Delete... FUCK! I don't even care."

Sign me up.

[Sebilrazen]

Pair some machine learning up with this to figure out what fires when I'm typing something, perhaps The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog? or the dictionary.

And, hell, have me look at and read a visual dictionary or encyclopaedia, similar to Leeloo in The Fifth Element, that way when I think of an image or concept it's typed. Anything that I can't specifically correlate to something I've seen I'd need to think about how to spell it out.

Re:Sign me up.

[Locke2005]

The problem is, experienced typists don't think in individual characters, they think in macros of several characters. Meaning there are thousands of patterns to detect, not just 26.

Why bother to type a document using a keyboard?

[Culture20]

Because I can type faster than I can consciously think of all the letters involved, and I'd rather not have the unconscious do the selection of letters, since it nnlk2f0 momsosbsbg 30jmgmgea0kaa kms9oj3f smov amsalk s.

Re:Why bother to type a document using a keyboard?

[natehoy]

Ah, but you have arms and legs.

A technology that allows you to type at a blistering eight characters per minute after getting invasive brain surgery isn't for you. A quadriplegic might decide it is worth the effort to them. Especially one that has other issues that prevent mouth-typing or other adaptations. And doubly so if they could control a wheelchair and home assistance systems by thinking specific patterns.

I can think of some other applications for something like this.. communication with someone in an apparent vegetative state? Control of certain key systems where thinking of a specific symbol could be used as a failsafe? A direct and accurate cranial interface might be slow, but it might also be a hell of a lot faster than the alternatives in some cases.

And maybe one day this technology will refine to the point where you simply think the words and they are entered into the device of your choice. Personally, I'm not sure I'd be digging that too much, but imagine the concept of talking to someone across the planet in realtime from little boxes you carry around on your belt if someone mentioned it 100 years ago. "If I really wanted to talk to them, I'd go do it in person. Who wants to talk in real time to someone half a world away anyway?"

muscle memory is a lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me be the first to say that muscle memory, in the form you have implied, is pure garbage. Muscles, by themselves, are only capable of contracting and relaxing as the result of a chemical-based stimulation brought on by the nervous system; there is no built-in cognition or post-processing. The only thing muscles do besides move is grow and atrophy in response to usage patterns and nutrient availability. To think that there is anything more than that to our muscular system is laughable. What you are describing as "muscle memory" is really the result of a nervous system rewiring that takes place entirely within the brain, creating pathways that result in the nearly autonomous execution of a learned movement pattern.

Regardless, even if your description of muscle memory were true, the choice to execute a memorized movement pattern still occurs within the brain, so this technology tree still applies.

Teh

[BetterSense]

Right now lots of people type "teh" instead of "the" because the letters are in some kind of unfavorable sequence (at least on qwerty...on dvorak I type "cmo" instead of "com" a lot). I wonder what kind of neuro-misspellings brain-typing would cause.

Re:Teh

[Locke2005]

I wonder what kind of neuro-misspellings brain-typing would cause. If my thoughts went directly from my brain to the computer, I suspect phrases like "Miss Anderson, we would like to offer you the position of receptionist" would come out as "Miss Anderson, I'd love to fuck your brains out!"

Re:Teh

[Trinn]

These sorts of typos tend to happen because one hand gets "ahead" of the other in the output buffer, leading to migrating letters/punctuation. I'm not quite sure /why/ this particular glitch happens, but it seems the brain isn't quite capable of syncing the hands to the same clock 100% of the time when moving at high speed (it doesn't happen as much to slower typists I've noticed, it seems to be far more prevalent among people who type rather fast, perhaps its a glitch in sequencing the macro output, since the muscle movements actually have to be laid out and predicted beforehand to execute that fast, gliding into one another, rather than being execute-then-return-to-home for each individual key)

Copy-paste

[buruonbrails]

What about mindless copy-paste? That's exactly how most of the content is "typed".

useless and slow...?

[kj_kabaje]

If I have to think about the letters one at a time, I'll be able to type faster than this will work still. Be true to myself, I didn't bother to RTA or the summary either much.

Re:useless and slow...?

[clone53421]

You don’t have to type the letters one at a time?

Re:useless and slow...?

[kj_kabaje]

No dude. I think of what I want to say and let the fingers go... if this research works like eye-tracker software, it take a while for it recognize where and concentrate on it, there's more lag in the software than my brain processing and telling my fingers what to do--all anecdotal of course, lol, so I've no evidence.

Re:useless and slow...?

[clone53421]

In other words, it’ll take practice. Sort of like learning to spell... or write... or type... or...

Re:useless and slow...?

[kj_kabaje]

You could be right--I'm actually talking about the lag in software/interpretation of the brainwaves to letters. I could be wrong of course. I'll stop speculating on something I know nothing about. :-P

Re:useless and slow...?

[clone53421]

Yeah. It probably wouldn’t be a viable text-entry method unless they could make it work from outside the skull (e.g. blade runner) and work with whole words.

In the meantime, it may still be an interesting option for people who cannot use other entry methods for whatever reason (e.g. paralysis).

Interesting

[El Nigromante]

The old idea of controlling your computer with minimal effort is of course interesting (i.e. Homer Simpson-Compatible).

I hope it would work better than some speech recognition systems, as you sometimes become tired and bored trying to emulate the appropriate tone of a snooty BBC speaker for being correctly understood.

On the other hand, it poses the new problem of what to do with your hands, while you are in front of your computer screen, typing with your brain.

Voice recognition software?

[drdrgivemethenews]

Lots of folks say voice recognition software sucks, but maybe it's not so bad after all. Imagine having to spell out every word.

-----

Theory blazes the trail, but it can't pave the road.

Think, man, Think!

[Zero__Kelvin]

"I don't really think about what letters I'm pressing when I type ..."

I don't think the word "think" means what you think it means ;-)

"Further, it's not entirely clear that our cognitive capacities reside solely in our brain."

It doesn't matter where the cognitive process happens. You are essentially saying that keyboards might not work to cause characters to appear on the display, since the CPU doesn't exist in the keyboard. They are talking about tapping into and extending I/O, not processing.

Solving the wrong problem

[MasTRE]

While it's an accomplishment (overlooking the obvious health concerns), this is a good example of applying technology to solving the wrong problem. Why do we type, why do we use letters? To communicate. If we no longer need to type (the mechanical equivalent of writing with a pen), we might not need to use letters anymore. To better visualize this, say you have the above system installed .. er, onto your brain (ouch!). Why not just save the raw outputs and allow the data to be processed in other ways? It would be one step closer to saving and communicating thoughts directly. A legacy interface to the data would be to spit out letters/words/sentences.

Making humans think about letters is a huge waste of potential, it's like trying to kill a fly with a bomb.

Re:Solving the wrong problem

[natehoy]

I think you're confusing "applying technology" with "developing technology". This is a first step toward cutting through the fog that is the neural pathways and starting to recognize thought patterns. No one is suggesting that you'll be able to buy this at Best Buy next month.

They started with numbers and letters because it gives them a small, controlled and discrete set of thought patterns to look for and recognize. As the detection gets better, I'd guess they'll probably increase its detection capabilities to start with simple words, then more complex ones. Eventually, maybe, it'll be able to not only recognize thoughts in a stream if you focus, but it might reach the level where it can reconstruct images from your memories of them.

Who knows what potential something like this might have? It may be able to insert electrical patterns into the brain someday, replacing your eyes and ears as the primary way to feed data to you.

But at the moment, they're just trying to understand simple stuff in a sea of noise. Letters are an easy start, because the data set they are looking for is small and controlled, and they can measure success easily.

'Cause I think of words, not letters

[HalAtWork]

When writing a document, I don't think of individial letters, I think of the word, because I automatically know how to write it. With this method, I'll be thinking of letters and I might lose track of the words, conjugation, pluralization, or even the entire sentence. This method seems unproductive unless you can get it to recognize entire words.

Re:'Cause I think of words, not letters

[clone53421]

When writing a document, I don't think of individial letters, I think of the word, because I automatically know how to write it.

You did while you were still learning.

I'll be thinking of letters and I might lose track of the words, conjugation, pluralization, or even the entire sentence.

I had the same exact problem when I was trying to learn how the cursive letters are written.

This method seems unproductive unless you can get it to recognize entire words.

That would be an obvious hurdle to overcome, yes.

Neural electrodes still don't work well

[Antique Geekmeister]

This is an old desire. The amount of electrical noise in a nervous system is very large, compared to the relevant signals. The result is that no matter what you do with all the processing, you have to monitor for roughly 500 msec to detect a real signal. So unless you type less than two characters/second, and don't care about having to do lots of corrections, it's not worth the effort and expense.

Interesting

[PPH]

It [p0rn] would [p0rn] be [p0rnp0rnp0rn] be [p0rn] interesting [p0rnp0rn] to see [p0rn] how [p0rn] well this would work [p0rnp0rnp0rn] compared to [p0rn] technologies [p0rn] like voice [p0rn] recognition [p0rnp0rn].

Dasher

[orgelspieler]

I wonder why they didn't try something like Dasher. This uses simple two-axis control to choose letters as they fly by. I would think this kind of method would be better than having to train for each individual letter.

Re:Dasher

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you have a two axis control to choose letters on your computer instead of a keyboard?

Simply because once you have learnt how to use the extra keys properly it is a lot quicker, the same principle applies here.

Potentially with some refinement of the control software and sufficient user training, this method could perhaps be as quick or quicker than typing on a real keyboard. The downside is the requirement to actually insert electrodes into the brain to get reading of the required accuracy.

The Eventual Path This Is Taking

[gearloos]

And maybe, someone will figure out a whole new technology where you just open your mouth and words come out and they only have to be in the room to download what you sent to them. Maybe they could even figure out how to do that with wires and maybe some kind of thing that goes on your ears and maybe in front of your mouth. No more typing at all ever..That would be really cool.

Reminds me of speech-to-text...

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of when speech recognition (i.e. speech to text) was all the rage and was going to make keyboards obsolete.

Until reality sinks in...
Accuracy matter - 95% accuracy is not good enough unless you didn't mind coming across as an idiot in your dictations (i.e. "the patient was prepped and draped for surgery" becomes "the patient was ripped and raped forcible").
An office full of workers all dictating at the same time begins to sound like your local pub on super bowl day.
Workman's comp claims for repetitive stress injuries are replaced by claims for laryngitis.

I'm sure, (once a workaround for the need to get a crainiotomy is found - that sort of a real show stopper in my book), this technology will find a niche role, but nothing to date has been found to replace the simple feedback loop that occurs between getting your thoughts on paper (or screen, or stone tablet for that matter) and reading them back to yourself before moving on.

'company for your thoughts'

[Anonymous Coward]

Look for mainstream interviews with Woz circa 1978-82. They ask him what people will do with computers and he gets tongue-tied. This is true of all the pioneers, but Woz is the most charming. These guys /know/ personal computers are going to be really big, but they completely fail to come up with concrete examples that make any sense in contemporary terms.

The internet hit the same thing around 1995. We'd always get that really lame example of hitching your refrigerator to the net.

So yes, you're exactly right. It's dumbass to say we're going to type this way. This is the frige all over again. Obviously, efficient thought-typing is going to take as much careful training as finger-typing. Obviously if we're that busy, we might as well just use our hands in most situations, rather than leave them folded in our laps.

Typing with your brain is a foolish example. This tech is going to be foundational to exceptionally useful and likely pervasive things that we cannot see yet, but this terrible example is the best we can come up with right now to make headlines.

There's a kind of Law of Prometheus here. Prometheus can never enumerate all the really cool things we're going to do with the breakthrough in any way that's going to make sense to the immediate recipients.

Re:I'll be out of the office a week from Tuesday..

[mcgrew]

Anybody who would elect for needless brain surgery (like you and the GP) don't need surgery, you need medication. Gees, it was bad enough letting them implant a device in my eyeball, but that was to keep from going blind. The only way I'd elect to have this surgery would be if I were parylized. My fingers work fine, I don't need wires in my skull.

Think your Email

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of a ruse some years ago executed by Red Herring magazine. They ran a story entitled, "Think Your Email," that elaborated a CIA Study commerical spinoff whereby technology (non-invasive) enabled a MMI to receive input from brain waves as keystrokes. As noted it was a total farce article, but I and many others were initially taken in by the CIA connection.

So humor me as I challenge this piece: Are you pulling my synapse on this one?

Proto cyber brain....

[jameskojiro]

I am thinking the first generation "cyber brain" will be a small implantable blue tooth device powered by your body heat or blood glucose that can link to your phone and behave as a "Texting Keyboard". It will be nothing more than an array of implantable electrodes under the scalp that can pickup the brain waves and replay them to the body powered CPU chip. The wires under the scalp will be made of a bio-compatible carbon fiber and as thick as a human hair which will be implanted with only one 1/4 inch incision into the scalp.

This will allow people to use phones that may not even have a keyboard and would make the iPhone even more popular.

It will solve the problem of having to wear a bulky brainwave helmet and dealing with the sensors moving around.

It will be an output only device, the ones with brain inputs will take a little longer due to figuring out how to interface the brain directly.

To 'pixelpusher220'

[Anonymous Coward]

'I really [boobies] don't know [boobies] what you are [boobies] talking about. [boobies]'

omg roflmao XD

S#1t, i bet you be thinkin' about 'boobies' all the time.

lol, typing with your brain.

Too slow. Touch typing is faster because...

[vulpinemac]

... you don't 'think' the letters as you type, you 'think' the words. Every time you 'think' the letters, your typing speed slows down significantly, but by 'thinking' the words, you can type at 120wpm or faster. In my own case, when copying text, my typing speed is approximately 70wpm, and I am not a trained clerk/typist, but merely an amateur author trying to get his stories published. What's really interesting is that I know of clerk/typists from the time of the IBM Selectric and even older, manual typewriters who could push 140 and even higher word counts. They all told me the same thing: "Don't try to spell the words, just think the word and let your fingers spell it."

Re:I'll be out of the office a week from Tuesday..

[Anonymous Coward]

How is medication going to help them type when both hands are occupied?!

Re:I'll be out of the office a week from Tuesday..

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess it is a lucky thing that every last person on the planet is exactly like you!

If that wasn't the case, it would be pretty silly to assume that no one would want this.

Silly Q and A time

[iliketrash]

"This article asks, 'Why bother to type a document using a keyboard when you can write it by simply thinking about the letters?'"

And then the article answers:

[It requires] "a sheet of electrodes laid directly on the surface of the brain after a surgical incision into the skull."

An Awesome Development

[Ferretman]

This is a great development for those too disabled to be able to use a keyboard directly.

Imagine Stephen Hawking being able to directly write out his ideas rather than them having to go through a translator. Imagine being able to give folks stuck in a bed because they're paralyzed from the neck down a way to interact with family, friends, the Internet at large.

Awesome, excellent discovery.

Still years until we jack-in to computers

[physburn]

8 characters per second, and thats once the user are trained and adjusted to the equipment. It this point it might just be useful for the totally disabled, e.g. Stephen Hawking, but for everybody else these no point. Having demostrated that its possible to interact with a computer via brainwaves, i wonder how much more it will take to produce a userable high speed connection, perphaps it can only be down with new-borns or the very young if the brain need to grow into the interface.

---

Human Computer Interfaces Feed @ Feed Distiller

Revolutionary

[edraven]

because this represents the first time the human brain has been involved in the process of updating Twitter.

So, I have to think EACH letter?

[dbuttric]

Well,

This strikes me as time consuming to have to think the letters to type a word. I want to be able to think the word and have it appear. When do we get a semantic, bi-directional neural interface?

Think about this: When a person starts to think about a document I bet there is a planning part of my brain that is forming an outline of the document, before I even start to come up with the actual content in it. I'd LOVE to tap into that planning, and be able to lay out an outline, just by thinking about it, and then be able to fill that outline with content through thought alone.

Imagine applying this to code generation!

Letters? Really?

[pclminion]

When I type, I do not think about letters. I imagine entire words. I do not think about spelling. People do not achieve high typing rates by working consciously at the level of letters. Having said that, this would be a godsend for people who do not have the use of their hands.

Re:Letters? Really?

[LeadSongDog]

Oh, crap. So I18n now means we'll have to compete against people who
a) think in a first language that has entire concepts for letters and
b) work a 16 hour day for 50 yuan in a rural hut.
We are so unemployed!

Re:I'll be out of the office a week from Tuesday..

[Anomalyst]

I don't need wires in my skull

You wouldn't say that if you had prolonged exposure to a tasp. ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasp%23Technologyrel=url2html-15022http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasp#Technology> ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireheadrel=url2html-15022http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead>

Love the icon!

[msevior]

I hadn't noticed the slashdot icon associated with this story before. It's very cool :-)

Mind reading is early 1970s technology

[Roark Meets Dent]

This is nothing more than the public unveiling of a technology that has existed in the classified world since at least the early 1970's. Try the following Google search for more information: http://www.google.com/search?q=utah+prison+inmate+%22synthetic+telepathy%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I tried typing with my brain ...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but every time I wind up with a bleeding frontal lobe.

Must be a better way.

Just give me my cyberdeck.

[VTMarik]

I'll take one of these and a jack behind my eye please!

Needs Shortcuts

[pubwvj]

I type, with my fingers, very quickly and accurately. I do not think about the individual letters. My hands are trained to short cuts. There are many things that I type frequently and those I type even faster, about 300 wpm. I love the idea, but it can't be based on letters. A keyboard may look like it is based on letters but it has a very good short hand / short cut system between it and my thinking. Thinking about the individual letters would slow me down considerably.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
Save 30% off Pastured Pork with free processing in our CSA Pre-Buy
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project

Free Hand

[Anonymous Coward]

No more typing with one hand.

Praying With Your Brain

[Anonymous Coward]

why not type with your brain? why not rub one off with your brain? just announce the evil mark which may not even be an rfid chip but some type of borg-unifying chip where everyone will connect to the internet with a brain or hand implant and we'll all be connected and fackbook/myspace/twitter won't be optional anymore because you'll be branded like a useless cow for milking. just fsckin get it over with we know this is where it's leading, stop all the foreplay so we (who believe) can reject it. enough mind manipulation with avatar and other films/media messages which IMO shit on the human being and convince him another beastly body or conciousness is preferable over humanity. Call them "lizards" (David Icke), aliens, or evil spirits, I call upon all Christians to reject all of this brain washing and awaken and prepare for when this mark is introduced.

Hebrews 4:12 - the Word is more powerful when you put it into practice than any external entity.
Eph 5:11 + 1 John 4:4
Matt 18:20 - don't feel you have to bow in front of statues, kiss icons, or fret over which church is right

God is there despite the hordes of FSM and other clowns who mock. You can discover the power for yourself. Everything around us, especially the brainwashing of the mass media, is a distraction to separate us from God. The signs are all around us, no need for panic, just trust in the Word. The time is coming where, after all the good reminders of God are removed from the landscape and they've gone so far as to rush all churches off of the land and we're huddled into each other's houses reading the Bible (along with poor cigarette smokers who were convinced second hand smoke was the most terrible curse in the world while people dance in exhaust fumes of vehicles everywhere in ignorance), when the last few will probably awaken and see through the b.s. of the world.

The Word is there, seek God and you shall find.

Umm, because I can do two things at once

[holophrastic]

How about because when I type, I'm typing something. That something is often highly involved. If I were typing something from memory, then sure, I guess I could save my fingers some effort. But more often than not, I'm thinking about what I'm typing -- which is very different than thinking about typing. Moving my fingers as a good typist doesn't require that I stop thinking about the actual subject matter. In fact, it's often as easy as talking -- and often faster than actually speaking. This is not surprising since I have one tongue and ten fingers.

So really, for as long as I have fingers, typing letter by letter will be easier than thinking letter by letter. That goes without saying. (:

People forget that keys on a keyboard aren't for inputting letters. Hand-writing could do that too. Keys on a keyboard are for focussing human motion into quantized key-presses. Now you want to focus my thinking into letters? That's inane. That's insane. That's not my brain.

Nervous twitch

[Anonymous Coward]

As I've said before, you just need nerves, not brains. There's no need to stick electrodes into someone's head for this sort of stuff. An arm implant would be sufficient; just set up the signal lines first, and the brain can work out what nerve twitch combinations make what letters.

Sign me up!

[mykos]

I've been wanting this for years.

Old news

[dushkin]

M-x telepathy-mode