Put some thought into it

October 14, 2004 5:43 PM

Paralysed man sends e-mail by thought
A pill-sized brain chip has allowed a quadriplegic man to check e-mail and play computer games using his thoughts. The device can tap into a hundred neurons at a time, and is the most sophisticated such implant tested in humans so far.
posted by moonbird (35 comments total)

[via]
posted by moonbird at 5:44 PM on October 14, 2004

The end is near.
posted by Witty at 5:47 PM on October 14, 2004

just amazing...can they use this technique to send impulses to muscles and nerves in paralysed areas?
posted by amberglow at 5:48 PM on October 14, 2004

Wow. That's incredible.
posted by dazed_one at 5:51 PM on October 14, 2004

*i am posting this comment solely through thought-control of my keyboard*

Very incredible stuff.
posted by davidmsc at 5:52 PM on October 14, 2004

GIVE ONE TO STEPHEN HAWKING. NOW, GOD DAMN IT.
posted by Hildago at 5:59 PM on October 14, 2004

just amazing...can they use this technique to send impulses to muscles and nerves in paralysed areas?

Certainly there's no reason why not. Some people think we can do better, though.

Yesterday I went to a talk by Mitsuo Kawato of ATR (a large Japanese national research lab). He says they're working on "cheap", noninvasive techniques for higher-precision recordings from groups of cells. Basically, they use a low-cost, low-resolution, non-invasive recording technique (like EEG or some IR recording technology whose name I always forget) and record the activities of large numbers of cells in specific brain areas, then train classifiers to recognize patterns in the recordings corresponding to very specific things (e.g. the direction of a moving visual stimulus). It's amazing that they can wring so much information out of such coarse recordings, but apparently they can.

The upshot is that it may be possible to achieve the fine neural control necessary for e.g. smart prosthetics without invasive surgery. That's exciting stuff! Also, imagine if we could learn to control cars or planes with some kind of... brain hat. It's a nice idea and twice as nice without a chip in the head.
posted by tss at 6:00 PM on October 14, 2004

I believe computers will eventually allow us to become beings of pure thought, living for incomparably large periods of time, in thought-universes of our own choosing. These are extremely early days.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:03 PM on October 14, 2004

things like this make me wish i was born 500 years in the future.
posted by gnutron at 6:10 PM on October 14, 2004

once these babies are hooked into the semantic web and wearables, it will be an interesting time to be alive.

excellent post
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 6:17 PM on October 14, 2004

When can I nail Claudia Schiffer for $19.95?

[/dennismiller]
posted by GeekAnimator at 6:21 PM on October 14, 2004

once these babies are hooked into the semantic web and wearables, it will be an interesting time to be alive.

*boggles*
posted by quonsar at 6:23 PM on October 14, 2004

the semantic web

Keep your religion to yourself.
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:23 PM on October 14, 2004

Okay, I'm ready for the future now. Where do I sign up?
posted by majcher at 6:39 PM on October 14, 2004

thanks, tss--this kind of stuff gives me hope for all of us, and for the future. : >
posted by amberglow at 6:46 PM on October 14, 2004

am I the only one sort of freaked out and upset by this? I don't mean upset like, "they shouldn't do this", but just personally, almost the opposite of everyone saying they wished they lived 500 years in the future. Like, why couldn't I have lived when things were still real...

I think P_G and Tryptophan are right about what this means for the future, and the fact that this much has already happened makes me think we'll be a lot further along before I die. Ray Kurzweil (was it him? I think) has said that immortality is around the corner and we'll all be able to download our minds soon enough, but then we'll each create our own perfect world and no longer be in touch, just interacting with computer generated fantasies- I dunno, I can't even really explain how there's any important difference if it doesn't seem different, and how do I know I'm not already living in a pod experiencing a virtual reality, blah blah blah, but... I still feel sort of sad about the idea.
posted by mdn at 6:49 PM on October 14, 2004

but mdn, stuff like this can actually help millions of people regain some function, even if it's not a total cure or anything. Making those people's lives better is certainly something to be happy about, no? It's not like we'll all be forced to have chips implanted (at least, not yet, or within our lifetimes). Now that practical things like are happening is when we should be establishing guidelines and laws and prescriptions--to help ensure we don't create a nightmare.
posted by amberglow at 7:06 PM on October 14, 2004

I just wanna know when I can transfer the music in my head directly from my brain to a disk.
posted by sklero at 7:07 PM on October 14, 2004

What I wanna know is, will this improve my Warcraft III micro skillz?
posted by aeschenkarnos at 7:07 PM on October 14, 2004

All the more reason to get a handle on spam ASAP.
And popups.
posted by 4easypayments at 7:21 PM on October 14, 2004

but mdn, stuff like this can actually help millions of people regain some function, even if it's not a total cure or anything.

no, I know, and of course that's fantastic. It isn't this specifically that throws me; it's the excitement for the virtual world that this could lead to.

It's not like we'll all be forced to have chips implanted (at least, not yet, or within our lifetimes). Now that practical things like are happening is when we should be establishing guidelines and laws and prescriptions--to help ensure we don't create a nightmare.

but it isn't a nightmare; it's a fantasy for some people. It's being able to have whatever life you want, being able to bend things to your will... yeah, I guess it's imaginable that people who like that will go do that, and whoever's left can hang with me in the Real World until it becomes so sparse and barren that we all move into computerland. And I guess people will have to do the programming and keep things going, so there will have to be interaction.

But talk about instant gratification! Sometimes I feel like the world is too fake and fractured already... it's hard to imagine how this wouldn't push us further in that direction. But maybe it's always been that way, just along different lines. Anyway, I think this is amazing, and exciting too, but also powerful and somewhat unsettling.
posted by mdn at 7:29 PM on October 14, 2004

500 years ago there was no internet, and it would have seemed unsettling then as neural data technology seems today.

It is very easy to go through life with technology always opening the doors and keeping the boggling sprawl of humanity in check without seriously considering its cost. And what is the cost? What are the benefits? Which outweigh the other? I, for one, think the benefits far outweigh the costs.
posted by Keyser Soze at 7:44 PM on October 14, 2004

It's pretty cool, especially the promise to the paralyzed and amputees and the like.

Don't look at it as the first step towards the Matrix, think of it as the first step for some people who have never stepped before, have never been able to do anything for themselves. Now they can do something for themselves.

That. Is. Pretty. Cool!
posted by fenriq at 7:49 PM on October 14, 2004

What I wanna know is, will this improve my Warcraft III micro skillz?

It's sad that the first thing that came to my mind was:

Kid 1: It's a video game.

Kid 2: I got it working.

Kid 1: My dad told me about these.

Marty (to himself): It is "Wild Gunman"

Kid 1: How do you play this thing?

Marty: I'll show you, kid. I'm a crack shot at this.

Kid 1: You mean you have to use your hands. That's like a baby's toy.

Marty (to himself): Baby's toy?
posted by m@ at 8:31 PM on October 14, 2004

I believe computers will eventually allow us to become beings of pure thought, living for incomparably large periods of time, in thought-universes of our own choosing.

A purely noetic future in which our imagination is stitched brightly across the fabric that weaves our world together. From every thought, strings of pure comminication pass without the measurement of doubt. Entire languages lay out before us unarrayed. Every stimulus in turn uncovers what we can only know as the beyond-orgasm... Reality becomes our cumrag!
posted by eatitlive at 11:22 PM on October 14, 2004

why couldn't I have lived when things were still real

You've got it backward. Things aren't real until they're inside the computer. People are finally about to become real.
posted by kindall at 11:36 PM on October 14, 2004

I would kill (bugs) for one of these, just to operate my mp3 player and send text messages while driving.
posted by cell at 1:45 AM on October 15, 2004

I just wanna know when I can transfer the music in my head directly from my brain to a disk.

posted by sklero at 7:07 PM PST on October 14

Exactly. And wordstreams. Pictures. Shapes. Pure thought freed from the burden of written and spoken language, free from symbolic interpretation.

All that some of these filthy proles can think of is "ooo, scary fake-real unreality! matrix baaaaad!"

Fuck that whack-ass shit. Gimme 100 of 'em. 100 million or so. I need to go make stuff. I need to sculpt light and sound and multidimensional, multicontextual and metasemantic modes of expression that haven't even been invented yet. I was born for this. Hurry, you mad scientists. We're waiting to make you very, very wealthy hereos. This whole "user interface" gibberish just gets in the way of my (and your) impending Godhood.

But of course, give some to Hawking yesterday, and others who need 'em first. Who knows what genius awaits out there, who knows what greater joy? I'll wait. But I'm the first non-handicapped person in line, consarn it. I've been waiting here since about 1979. No cuts, no buts, no fucking coconuts.
posted by loquacious at 2:34 AM on October 15, 2004

So, of course, this stuff was in a bad dream i had last night--"Non-implanted people need not apply" basically --the speed at which thoughts could do things was so much faster than hands and eyes that most jobs became open only to implanted people. Ugh.
posted by amberglow at 5:54 AM on October 15, 2004

amberglow, that's not the half of it. I'll certainly chime in that this is freaking amazing and a Great Leap Forward for those who have physical impairment. But we have to think about the other ramifications. How long before someone gets one of these on a doctor's orders rather than on their own volition? Five years? One? And will these have as much integrity, fidelity and security as, say, Diebold voting machines?
posted by soyjoy at 8:08 AM on October 15, 2004

then again tho, they haven't ever mandated cochlear implants.
posted by amberglow at 8:27 AM on October 15, 2004

yet.
posted by soyjoy at 10:41 AM on October 15, 2004

The next day's headline would be "Gallaudet Riots", they seem to have trouble just talking about the darn things.
posted by m@ at 11:18 AM on October 15, 2004

Amberglow: This has already happened. Thousands of times. And we're still here.

Ever apply for work through a temporary staffing agency? Ever take a typing accuracy and speed test? Have you ever applied for a job that requires a specific skillset? Ever hear "Only the computer literate need apply?" Or "MS Office 2000 experience required"? How about "Must know shorthand"? Or even "Experienced sheep-shearers only"?

Do you think most non-manual labor jobs would hire someone who was illiterate these days?

Seriously, WTF? Your fears have the fetid stench of Diana Moon Glampers all over them. People have varying levels of skill, people own different tools. What, is it unethical to expect that your auto mechanic owns his own tools and knows how to use them?

Oh, dear God! He has thumbs! That's so unfair!!

Mind, I'm more interested in abolishing the capitalist "Work until death to merely survive" culture and establishing a creative and robust "Work because it pleases you, and maybe even live forever, or until you've had enough" culture of perpetual indulgence and discovery, but that's probably still a bit farther into the future. If ever.

But this is exactly the sort of advancement that leads to this paradise. And yeah, I realize that the flipside of this paradise would be awful. If we don't actively choose paradise and fight for it and enable it and build it ourselves, someone else is going to grab the tools and build us all prison.
posted by loquacious at 11:46 AM on October 15, 2004

And I wonder who those loving people might be.
posted by troutfishing at 7:54 PM on October 15, 2004