Earlier this week Adam Wilson sent a Tweet. Good on you, Adam, but so what? Well, this Tweet was extraordinary because Adam sent it using his brainwaves.
Operating machines using the mind has been done before (anyone remember the paralyzed woman drinking coffee using only her thoughts?), but never for something as mundane as updating a Twitter status.
The system developed and used in this case is called the BCI2000. It is described as “a general-purpose system for brain-computer interface (BCI) research. It can also be used for data acquisition, stimulus presentation, and brain monitoring applications.”
The BCI2000 has the potential to become an everyday tool, worldwide, as its inventor, Jonathan Wolpaw certainly hopes: “Our vision is that BCI2000 will become a widely used software tool for diverse areas of real-time biosignal processing. “
But Wolpaw is not the only one working on a mainstream brainwave product: Australian developers Emotiv have released a headset designed for human-computer interaction. The Emotiv EPOC headset is designed for gamers, and uses a set of sensors to tune into electric signals produced by the brain to detect player thoughts, feelings and expressions and connects wirelessly to most PCs.
Californian company NeuroSky is promoting a device that can detect users’ emotions, and will be licensed to other companies, like Sega, Nokia, and Mattel, instead of being sold directly to the public.
New Scientist speculates that this technology has the potential to permanently change the way we interact with technology. Perhaps in the future, everything will be controlled by thought.
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