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Post by Merkuri on Jan 16, 2004 16:42:26 GMT -5
What would you say if I told you that monkeys had been trained to move a mouse cursor on a screen using only their mind? Not science fiction, this is science fact. And Cyberkinetics is asking the FDA for permission to test it in humans. Would you let somebody plug electronics into your head so you never had to touch a mouse again? www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,61889,00.html?tw=wn_story_top5 SAN FRANCISCO -- Lots of people wish they could jack their brain directly to their computer and toss out those annoying keyboards and joysticks -- especially people who can't use keyboards or joysticks. Five quadriplegic patients might be months away from testing a brain-computer interface created by Cyberkinetics, a privately held company in Foxboro, Massachusetts. The company's system, called BrainGate, could help patients with no mobility to control a computer, a robot or eventually their own rewired muscles, using only their thoughts. If the trials go well, a product could be on the market by 2007. ... read the rest of the article in the link above.
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VladTaltos
Peasant
They Call Me A Hartless biatch And Some Times I Think Its True
Posts: 52
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Post by VladTaltos on Jan 16, 2004 16:57:26 GMT -5
Wow thats weird but any who i would like one it would make playing NWN's so much funner
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Post by EK - Shadow of Death on Jan 16, 2004 17:23:51 GMT -5
That would rock. Soon it'll be like in Clarke's 3001, and we'll all be virtual cyborgs
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Post by khyron1144 on Jan 16, 2004 19:00:43 GMT -5
Interesting.
Let me know when it works safely and reliably for humans.
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nodwyck
Soldier
A henchman isn't just for Christmas, it's for life!
Posts: 261
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Post by nodwyck on Jan 16, 2004 20:05:21 GMT -5
Nobody, and I mean Nobody, is going to jack a Microsoft product into my brain, as long as I live (although if somebody did, that 'living' thingy wouldn't be much of a problem, huh?)
Think about it - my right eye showing blue screen of hell for some reason or another while the right one shows that annoying "low disc space" bubble in bottom right. Constant updating would hog my sensory bandwidth so my senses would work just one at a time. No backwards compatibility would cause me to 'upgrade' my brain every 2 years (or even less), and my dreams would be filled with prompts to send error reports about my bodily functions.
No sir, that ain't happening to me.
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Post by Merkuri on Jan 17, 2004 9:10:46 GMT -5
:eyeroll: Heh, you know this is neither a microsoft product, nor does it send any info to your brain, only from it. All it is right now is a new way to move a cursor. Maybe in a few years they can advance it enough to move other things, too, like a quadriplegic's arm.
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nodwyck
Soldier
A henchman isn't just for Christmas, it's for life!
Posts: 261
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Post by nodwyck on Jan 17, 2004 9:34:53 GMT -5
Bill's gonna buy the world. no doubt about it. That's just me ranting. had some major Windows issues last night (was up until 7 am with em). I love 'clean installs'. nothing works as it's supposed to. Computers are such 'bullet-in-the-head' kind of fun sometimes.
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Post by Sightspitter on Jan 17, 2004 13:11:11 GMT -5
No computer is getting near my brain for as long as I can vocalise my objection to it. I am perfectly happy with the way I am now. Although for people who are unable to move their own bodies, this is a very great technological breakthrough and I hope the tests go well.
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Post by Sharess on Jan 20, 2004 22:49:20 GMT -5
oh like bloody hell there going to stick a jack in my head and i mean that too. I got hands and can tpye it and thats what i think them people is sooo wierd. yup no jack in my head
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Post by EK - Shadow of Death on Jan 20, 2004 23:18:09 GMT -5
I think this is a great idea. Especially in a century or so if/when we can control computers and machines solely with our minds. How difficult would it be then to upload a person's mind to a machine? Or to "breed" AI? Interesting...
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Post by Hussar on Jan 26, 2004 7:28:35 GMT -5
True EK. There are just SO many applications for this. Imagine having the ability to visualize data internally and to be able to transmit and receive. People would literally have huge amounts of information closer than their fingertips. This would drastically change our education system for one. Think about it. No more need to memorize places and dates. A simple search could give you the answer almost instantly. Instead of teaching information, teachers would be forced to teach interpretation. The skills for sifting and evaluating information would become far more important than regurgitating simple facts or figures. It would also make social engineering and propaganda much more difficult.
To give an example. Here in Japan, history texts stop about 1935 and start again in 1950. Ok, it's not as bad as that, but certainly anything to do with WWII is heavily edited and glossed over. If students had access to the internet constantly, there would be no way for a teacher to simply state "truth". It would be far to easy to find credible contradictions to what the teacher was saying.
I see this as an incredibly liberating technology. People, instead of relying on one group of people for information, whether that group is teachers, or large corporations in the media, could gain access to data from a wide range of sources and hopefully get a much broader view of issues, and hopefully, become more informed.
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Post by Merkuri on Jan 26, 2004 8:03:35 GMT -5
At the same time, Hussar, there's a lot of potential for abuse. Projecting this technology into the future and assuming that both downloading and uploading information is possible, imagine what a virus in the computer you're hooked to could do. Rather than just having your social security number or bank account number stolen you could risk an identity thief stealing everything from your mother's maiden name to your favorite color to the time your kids get out of school and where they wait for the bus.
And as for the classroom, I can imagine they might have to make it manditory to shut your implant off during class. It's bad enough nowadays with wireless networks and laptop computers or cellphones... imagine when somebody comes up with an instant messenger for your brain-computer. Combined with a wireless network you now have a form of telepathy. Why listen to the teacher when you can sit there quietly with a look of rapt attention on your face and discuss last night's baseball game with a friend. Or even watch the morning cartoons, if they put TV broadcasts on the network.
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Post by Hussar on Jan 26, 2004 23:34:23 GMT -5
I was more thinking of making some sort of internal interface. Where you can access the internet by mental command. There would be no link between you "meat" memory and the hardware installed. It would simply act as a way of accessing information. The same way you cannot get a virus on your mouse, you can't really virus an interface. The storage medium can be corrupted, and I would hope that some sort of external storage could be used for precisisely this reason, but it becomes very difficult to affect the interface. You can't get a virus in your modem, can you? Also, why turn this off in the classroom? As I said, it would drastically change a classical classroom where the teacher stands in front of the class and imparts knowledge as if he or she were preaching from the mountain. Knowledge becomes useless in a teaching sense. The accessing of knowledge and the critical faculties to assess the value of that information become far more important. As far as goofing off goes, well, that would be pretty easy to control. At least, as easy as it is now . What's the difference if little Johny is watching Spongebob or if he's daydreaming. The results are the same, he's not paying attention. I imagine that blocking could be done by the transmitters within a school. Same way as we place NetNanny on public library computers, a similar thing could be done with a wireless network within a school.
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Post by Merkuri on Jan 27, 2004 7:54:09 GMT -5
Yeah, you're right, the way you're thinking about it there's no real way to hack data out of a person's head. But there's still potential for some pretty evil viruses. Imagine if something corrupted the driver that you're using to interface with the web, making it so that instead of getting information you're getting blinding flashes of light and piercing tones. Remember that what we have right now is only output. We have no idea how to work input just yet, and the best way might be to simply "hyjack" our other senses and input data to them. Which leaves potential for abuse. Right now if your screen starts flasing nauseatingly your instinct says to shut your eyes or turn away. That won't work if the image is being piped straight to your optic nerve.
And as for schools, I could think that instead of blocking, what might be more "evil" would be to simply make everything public, to the teacher at least. So he or she could sort of mentally hop around the class and see what each student is accesing. ("Billy, would you care to stand up and datavise the script of your IM conversation to the rest of the class so we could all participate?" )
Part of me wonders if this would change the face of schooling too much. What if students never have to memorize anything? Would that hurt their memories in the long run, never having exercised it? Or would we not really need memories anymore if we have access to such a large information base? What would happen if the network went down? Would we forget such "basic" things as what month it is or our own birthdays because we never bothered to memorize them, we simply always looked them up? I feel that although it seems like a good thing to force teachers to try and engage students and get them thinking, rather than to simply memorize facts, but I think that there's something to the memorizing process. I mean, although it's impressive to have a student write an essay on the symbolism of Poe's The Raven, it's also impressive for him to stand up in front of the class and recite the poem by heart. They work different parts of the brain, and I think memory would be a bad thing to lose, even if it comes with advanced critiquing and creativity skills.
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Post by Zonestar on Apr 29, 2004 15:30:02 GMT -5
Jacking with m me would be a no go...
Hackkers will find a way to ruin this give them a couple of months after this is realeased and theyll figure out a way...
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