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Type With Your Brain — Like Stephen Hawking
Diggester writes that a group of researchers from Universiteit Maastricht's Faculty of Psychology & Neuroscience Department of Neurocognition
"have invented a system that translates thoughts into letters. This really is an incredible breakthrough for any type of handicap, from serious motor impairment to debilitating speech. The system has been in real-world testing and is an extraordinary success. The patients are set up to look at a screen of the alphabet, thinking about each letter for a period of time; they should be able to think-type in real time. While it is not near the speed of actual typing, it is the only program of its kind and can only get better." "Of its kind" being relative, reader cylonlover writes "Tech startup Neurovigil announced last April that Stephen Hawking was testing the potential of its iBrain device to allow the astrophysicist to communicate through brainwaves alone. Next week Professor Hawking and iBrain inventor, Dr Philip Low from Stanford University, present their findings at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference in Cambridge, England. In anticipation, Gizmag spoke to Dr Low about the potential applications of the iBrain."
I want to be able to kill with my brain like Darth Vader.
>> While it is not near the speed of actual typing,
Ubviously you haben"t seem us type.
That Maastricht discovery is based on an fMRI scanner. AFAIK these scanners are hugely expensive as well as hugely huge. That kind of limits the usefulness in the near future.
Obligatory : Reginald Barclay
We are always striving for more random data sources and I think they may have hit on something, attach this to the brain of any video-game addled teenager and what they "think" is sure to be as close to pure random noise as you could ever hope to achieve.
What if I am deaf (or using headphones) and I don't turn off the speaker connected to output my thoughts? Or what happens if somebody is not aware that the device is connected to output their thoughts? Would be used for interrogations? I see a lot of funny/embarrassing/interesting things happening with this device if it really works in the real world.
Terrible name.
Maybe they should call it the eBrain instead of iBrain since Apple didn't make it. If Apple did make it, the EULA would say they own your brain.
Instead, his computer screen has a cursor moving across a QWERTY grid. When it's on the letter/word he wants, a very faint twitch from his cheek, which is the equivalent of a mouseclick, selects the letter/word.
Of course if this shows any promise of outperforming the keyboard, a very strange shift in technology will become inevitable: keyboards and mice are replaced with head-mount devices. I would like to go on the record as saying ewwwwww.....
Please disconnect my brain :o|
Clearly this is just an elaborate ruse to see if they can get Hawking to roll around with a pair of underwear on his head.
iThink iWill iGouge MiSelf.
Because Hawkins recognizes the importance of science education and outreach, maintains a media presence and published books to help laypeople understand at least a rough outline of theoretical physics. Higgs just published really arcane mathematics. Arcane mathematics is a very useful thing to have, certainly, it is what drives science and technology forwards, but it isn't going to motivate people to get into science as a career. Hawkins did math too, and I'm not even close to qualified to judge who did the most useful math, but I know that Hawkins has done a lot more to raise the standard of science education in the wider culture, and that makes him the winner by my judgement.
Now we're one step closer to immortality through "Brain in a Box"(tm) technology!
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Not if it requires people to use their brains.
I wonder about other planned uses for this device....think how valuable it would be during interrogations :-(
Yeah, I don't see how anybody can talk shit about a man who is doing Carl Sagan's job just by twitching his cheek...
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Is that a kind of superpower? Like, speech can debilitate people? Wow.
Put one foot in front of the other and soon you'll be...able to kill with your brain like Darth Vader.
Every 6 seconds the word 'sex' will appear on the screen.
Maybe not in the actual stage, but in a not so far future, if it manages to get practical/faster, for everyone and in portable devices (google glass 2.0?), could it change how we think? A part of what we are is that conversation with ourselves that we call concience, if you start talking with a keyboard, maybe for everyday tasks (like searching in google/wikipedia, posting in social networks or keeping a mindblog), that could be dangerous? or just will be more or less the same as talking with an actual keyboard, or a voice recognition software?
This was a book, written by a man with a stroke. All he had control over was his blinking, so he had to blink for every letter. It was estimated that it took 200,000 blinks.
For some reason, when I read the story title, I thought about this guy... there are many people that would benefit from this tech.
Colleagues, friends, parents, etc. hate my loud clicky keyboards since I type fast and loud like a machine gun (what my college friend said when I was in college). See here for the details and a poll. :( If this brain typing can be fast or faster than what I can think, then I will use it! Wait, I don't have a brain. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Because Hawkins... maintains a media presence
Not enough of one for people to get his name right, apparently.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
'nuff said
http://www.google.com/search?q=o'brien+ds9&tbm=isch
Because despite being all but locked-in, the man found a field he liked to work in, rose to arguably the single most respected teaching position in the world, and managed to not only gain an exceedingly rare degree of fame for a scientist, but to use that fame to raise respect for science itself. That's freaking badass. He's one of the best role models out there for people learning to adapt to some of the worst curveballs life can throw at you.
Wouldn't it be better to translate thoughts into WORDS? It should be easier, too. You don't translate other languages letter by letter. Just treat brain waves as a language.
Apple's lawyers sue since they probably have a patent for putting 'i' in front of the names of technological devices. At least with the crap they've been sneaking through the USPTO as of late.
Oddly enough, I know very well his name in Hawkings... but somehow I managed to make the same mistake three times. Consecutively.
And there I go again, adding an extra s. What is it about that name that makes me want to unconsciously turn it to possessive form?
And there I go again, adding an extra s. What is it about that name that makes me want to unconsciously turn it to possessive form?
A small hint: For a possessive form, add an apostrophe in front of the final 's'. Something made you unconsciously omit it.
Ezekiel 23:20
"In summary, the surface at the Schwarzschild radius acts as an event horizon in a non-rotating body that fits inside this radius ... MAN, that is one hot student intern! Wonder if she shags -- SHIT, DON'T TYPE THAT! Goddam it, don't type that either!!! Delete all! Delete all!"
licet differant, aequabitur
This article is very inaccurate. The field of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) has been around for quite some time. I, myself, am published in the field. Most systems use EEG. The highlighted alphanumeric grid is the standard interface used to elicit the target brain signals. Hundreds of people show to the annual BCI conference.
with this:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/04/03/18/0132222/nasa-develops-tech-to-hear-words-not-yet-spoken
Unfortunately, the original article is gone. Time to search the WABACK machine.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr