The World Egg
New worlds, new humanity

OK, so it’s been a while since I posted, and I’m trying to catch up with a number of things that I’ve bookmarked, and so I’m getting creative with the post titles…

Anyway, the BBC reports that researchers at Boston University have developed a brain implant that is able to read thoughts and translate them into machine-generated speech.

The article reassures us:

“There is a huge difference between a technique like this, which is able to pick up signals the subject wants to be picked up, and being able to delve deep into the mind,” says Professor John Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

However, it wasn’t all that long ago that the technology to control mouse a computer by thought alone also required a chip to be implanted in the brain - now, though, it’s a $15 accessory. In the same way, I suspect that this thought-to-speech technology will also rapidly become a cheap peripheral - and no doubt governments around the world will soon have black labs working on using them in combination with truth drugs…

Yes, another title to tease you into reading, promising more than it can deliver. I’m at that head-shaking point where I can’t quite believe what I’ve just seen.In an interview about his latest novel, novelist William Gibson points out that writing science fiction is getting harder, because:

we can’t culturally have futures the way that we used to have futures because we don’t have a present in the sense that we used to have a present. Things are moving too quickly for us to have a present to stand on from which we can say, “oh, the future, it’s over there and it looks like this.”

Here’s the perfect example:

Neurosky, a company that will let us interact with games (and tools, and machinery, and robots, and cellphones…) just by controlling our mental state, blinking, and so on through a device that will be on the market next year - and should only add $15 to the price… Incredible… who thought it would come so soon? And look at how portable the device is! Combine this with the kind of augmented reality I was talking about the other day, and we will soon be seeing some wild stuff happening out there on the streets! Are we ready for this, I wonder…? I also wonder: when will they go to IPO….?

Here’s that augmented reality clip again: watch this back-to-back with the above, and imagine the possibilities when they’re combined….

Update:

My word, and those 3-d avatars of yourself that I mentioned in that earlier post… hehehe, I should have known: they’re going to be on the market later this year!