The Future of Technological Telepathy

    Technology follows a natural sequential trend from "new feature" to "improved feature" and finally to "aggregated feature", the prime example being the smartphone, which has a phone, mp3 player, camera, computer, internet connection, GPS unit, voice activation, and so on and so forth.  Each of these features had been developed independently since their conception, and now it is possible to aggregate them into one device (and continue to be improved as an aspect of an aggregate).  It seems fair to assume that this trend will continue and that some day our smart phones (and watches and glasses and cars and homes) will include those technologies which are currently being developed, and probably some which haven't been though of yet.

    An essential field of innovation that is at times hard to notice is the innovation of interface.  At some way back in the early 80s when a graphical user interface was revolutionary.  Today touch screens are approaching perfection and as is often quoted by common knowledge, all that is left is for the price to go down  New interfaces are being developed, such as the Kinect and Leap motion detection interfaces which can be categorized under "Minority Report" interfaces.  Voice recognition software is also experiencing rapid advances, though it still has a long way to go.

    These future interfaces will undoubtedly have a major impact on the way we interact with computers as they are improved and incorporated into existing systems, but they all require us to "do" something: wave our hands about or speak slowly and clearly, and there are plenty of situations that aren't ideal for talking to Siri and gesturing at a screen.  But there is another kind of interface being developed, a direct brain-computer interface (BCI) that promises to someday allow us to manipulate our technology with our thoughts alone.


    EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraphy) technology has been a staple of hospitals and research facilities for decades, using an array of electrodes to measure the electrical activity of the brain from the scalp.  While it is no longer the most powerful tool for measuring brain activity, it is still commonly used and more importantly it is relatively affordable, which expands the number of people that have access to it. Consumer grade version of EEG arrays are currently available, brands such as NeruoSky and Emotiv are selling headsets and software that allow users to set certain thought signals as commands on the computer.

    This technology is still in its infancy, but with the increased economic access and USB based hardware, it will be developed not only for research, but also for common applications.  There are games for the system already, as well as various other applications such as bio-feedback training and accesability for the disabled.  One prominent researcher in the field, Mike D'Zmura of UC Irvine, has said, “Initially, communication would be based on a limited set of words or phrases that are recognized by the system; it would involve more complex language and speech as the technology is developed further.”  The technology cannot actually read thoughts and respond to them, they recognize specific electrical pattern generate by certain types of thought. 

Read more at: http://phys.org/news137863959.html#jCp

“Initially, communication would be based on a limited set of words or phrases that are recognized by the system; it would involve more complex language and speech as the technology is developed further.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news137863959.html#jCp

“Initially, communication would be based on a limited set of words or phrases that are recognized by the system; it would involve more complex language and speech as the technology is developed further.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news137863959.html#jCp

     Of course there is also some concern surrounding the development of this technology.  Researchers are analyzing the risk of sensitive information about the user being extracted from the thought signal when the user is prompted with subtle stimuli, such as bank account numbers or recognition of faces.  The Emotiv site even promotes its product as a useful tool for market research, essentially claiming that these EEGs might reveal our true reaction to something even if we meant to conceal it (essentially affordable lie detection equipment), for which one can imagine some uncomfortable if not necessarily nefarious uses. 

    Still it is exciting to imagine that systems such as this may someday soon become a very common form of interface with computers, and result in some very interesting and beneficial applications, such as large scalle EEG scans for learning students- turning methodologies of education into a hard science of attention and retention- or creating the most streamlined note-taking application ever. And of course the military is interested in the possible applications, including the soldier to soldier telepathic communication, "for example, a soldier would “think” a message to be transmitted and a computer-based speech recognition system would decode the EEG signals," suggests Mike D'Zmura, who is the recent recipient of $4 million dollar research grant from the Pentagon, but he is careful to stress the potential civilian benefit of research paid for by the military: "I think that this will eventually become just another way of communicating."