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Brain/Computer Interface (BCI) is technology that directly connects the brain to a computer. BCI has progressed from early experiments using monkeys to a point where it is now being experimentally applied to humans.
Brown University, Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc., recently released results from its "Brain Gate 2" project. An included video (scroll down in the article) shows Cathy Hutchinson, a quadriplegic woman also known as subject "S3," manipulating a robotic arm. In one sequence, she is seen using the arm to pick up a bottle of coffee and sip some through a straw, effectively feeding herself entirely through her own volition for the first time in fifteen years.
BCI is an emerging technology in its early stages, and there are still several difficulties that must be addressed before it can be applied as a therapeutic medical intervention in humans. However, this is also an area of technology where progress has been surprisingly steady, and combinations of converging technologies may lead to some rapid advancements. BCI may well progress in a manner similar to the evolution of mobile phones over the last four decades.
It doesn't take much imagination to see that the applications for such a technology extend well beyond the domain of medicine. The ability to control machines through thought alone could ultimately redefine the limits of human abilities. Cathy Hutchinson may well have just demonstrated the equivalent of a 1973 car-phone, the beginnings of a technology that could rapidly evolve to become as commonplace, and socially driving, as the smart phone.
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Comments: 6
I would like to add to it, I mean to BCI, that conservatives and religious laws will limit us for still about 2 generations.
On one hand BCI responds to a define brain organization and, on another hand, through nanotech we shall be able to use such energy.
But this is reversable and , always through nanotech, we shall be able to organize the brain energy. We shall have brain driven computers and computer driven brains.
Our knowledge could then be stocked in a computer and sent back to the brains. This means that ethic and freedom will become questionable and, at the least, under constant threat as geniocracy so often tries.
We are entering into a highly philosophical field.
Even Oscar Wilde will be outdated as the pretty woman could ask for a fetus with blue eyes, blond, handsome, sexually well ... with a huge memory and high mathematician skills: each quality could be programmed on a smaller chip than a pin and will cost a thousand dollars.
Sole education needed for the future baby will be the handling of a computer smaller than a wrist-watch but the computer will think for him destroying our natural abilities, changing even more the genes we have, making the specie we are in danger so next evolution will become brain resistant.
If then we take into account the body changes due to evolution as the loss of legs we shall become vulnerable to any external attack.
This may be our specie in some half a million years from now ... the "Homo-fu#kputer".
No one can even imagine the Hell loaded with so many brains not even the fire could destroy while Evil could ask God how to deal with such a new specie.
To be serious, this shows as well how much are China and Africa with their rare earths needed for the computers and ... Afghanistan.
each nanotube is a very good conductor of electricity, with practically no losses and, p.ex. a ton of copper cables is reduced to ab. 200 Lbs of weight.
Thanks to the tooling, we can SEE the atoms and MOVE them from one position to another, changing the properties of the element. Noticeable that, at this point, classical physics is not responding any more. This why the famous quantum mechanics which is able to compute with quite an accuracy the forces driving the atoms.
This is how miniaturization is achieved and we could this way create batteries lasting 100 times more that the actual, create engines which would spend a gallon and half for a 20 Lbs missile to reach the Moon, manufacture tennis rackets which do not bend when hitting the ball, material with unexpected properties, etc. We could even apply such a technology to the atoms of our living cells. We started with Carbon 12 (12 atoms) and were able to create a Carbon 60. Now we are also dealing with "rare earths" which mines are located in China, Africa, Afghanistan and, I suspect, in Russia and Brazil.
Nanotech tooling has been developed thanks to Clinton but nowadays Europe has been investing more than America into such a technology which will help us to not be dependent on oil imports within the next 5 to 10 years.
Carbon nanotubes are still expensive and 1 gram of it costs ab. $ 500 while just Germany produces 300 grams per working day.
Jerry, The article is just about the appearance of technology that allows a person to directly control machines with nothing more than thoughts. The linked article describes how an experimental device has allowed a completely paralyzed woman to control a robotic arm, and to use it to feed herself for the first time in fifteen years.
There is an excerpt from a 60-Minutes episode about the woman here, explaining a bit more about how this has been accomplished
Some of my work is involved with such technology, so it's of special interest to me. There are actually several universities and research facilities working on the same, or similar technologies. The immediate motivation is to restore abilities to people with certain spinal or brain injuries, or to allow amputees to control prosthetic limbs directly.
Advances in the field are now happening very rapidly, and I suspect that brain-implants as a medical treatment will probably start happening within a decade. In two decades, they may be as common as dental implants. But why stop there?
We already augment our abilities with technologies ranging from cars to cell-phones. But the ability to interact with machines directly through thought opens up a whole new domain. Imagine controlling a vehicle (perhaps remote), or a communication device by thought alone. The definition of a human body could be radically different in another 50-years, with BCI as common as smart phones.
"Good" or "bad," I can't say. There will be inevitable ethical debates, but human nature will drive them toward acceptance. A while back, I had a discussion with Drizzle about why this happens. Given the choice, people will seek to improve their own condition, or at least the condition of their offspring. When enough of the population exhibits the advantages of that new condition, those without are "left behind." Consider education, vaccinations, or genetic selection to weed out "defects" (all presently common practice). There may come a time when people without BCI are considered "handicapped."
There is a vast number of drivers out there that hopefully will be kept on roads just for them as they are not very "level headed" and it's better that they "meet up" with each other rather than the rest of us ... :-)
Sorry for the attempted humor Ruta, it is an extremely important subject and I am glad it has folks like yourself involved in it.