Two of the hot new toys for the 2009 Christmas season used simple electrodes to read brainwaves and translate them to movement of a plastic ball – depending on your level of concentration, the ball would move up or down. Of course this is a quick and dirty implementation of the technology, which can be used, for example, to provide paraplegics with the ability to control robots or give the deaf the ability to hear again via cochlear implants.
CNN examines the potential future uses of brain-computer interfaces, which include DARPA research into technology that would enable soldiers to communicate through thought alone:
DARPA, the Pentagon’s technology research division, is currently working on an initiative called “Silent Talk,” which would let soldiers on secret missions communicate with their thoughts alone. This stealth component is attractive, but naysayers fear that such soldiers could become manipulated for evil means.
Telepathy implants won’t replace Facebook and Twitter anytime soon, but that possibility is problematic as well.
“You can imagine communicating with your friends through the devices, and that opens up a lot of ethical issues,” Rao says. Would you want your friends and family to know everything you are thinking? Would little white lies become obsolete?
If it’s wrong to want to update Twitter and Facebook via a neuroprosthetic, then I don’t want to be right.