The realities of being able to post to Facebook and type messages with your brain inched closer during a presentation by the company on Wednesday. While pointing out that the smartphone has had some unintended consequences on the relationships on the “people sitting right next to us,” Facebook’s Regina Dugan introduced an idea that seems more like science fiction according to The Guardian:
Facebook has assembled a team of 60 people, including machine learning and neural prosthetics experts, to enable such a system. Facebook is currently hiring a brain-computer interface engineer and a neural imaging engineer. Its goal? To create a system capable of typing one hundred words per minute – five times faster than you can type on a smartphone – straight from your brain.
“It sounds impossible but it’s closer than you may realize.”
She was quick not to damn people using smartphones, condemning the idea that it should be treated as an “addiction,” so the idea of a brain augment that allows you to post without lifting the phone to type is their solution. It sounds like trouble waiting to happen, especially if you forget to turn off your brain connection or it just starts randomly posting thoughts like on South Park.
The good news according to Gizmodo is that the connection to your brain won’t involve any surgery. No need to worry about something being infected or being pummeled by religious folks who feel you’ve accepted the mark of the beast. The company will figure out their tech and create some sort of wearable technology that features “non-invasive sensors that can measure brain activity hundreds of times per second at high resolution.” Clearly, it has to be something that doesn’t solve the smartphone issue by replacing it with everybody in the restaurant looking at the guy in the brain helmet.
It’s the other aspects and ideas that seem like something out of Black Mirror:
She painted a picture of a future where everyone wears augmented reality glasses that supplement our field of vision with additional information such as directions, and enhanced capabilities such as real-time translation of people’s voice or the ability to “mute” specific people and noises from your soundscape
Just block people from your life for good and remove them from the conversation. At least in this scenario, you can take the glasses off and don’t have to worry about people hacking your brain. Mark Zuckerberg posted his thoughts on Facebook shortly after the event, calling it a “first step”:
Our brains produce enough data to stream 4 HD movies every second. The problem is that the best way we have to get information out into the world — speech — can only transmit about the same amount of data as a 1980s modem. We’re working on a system that will let you type straight from your brain about 5x faster than you can type on your phone today. Eventually, we want to turn it into a wearable technology that can be manufactured at scale. Even a simple yes/no “brain click” would help make things like augmented reality feel much more natural.
What do you think? Technological nightmare or the wave of the future? Facebook already controls so many parts of your life as it is, why not add a few more.
(Via The Guardian / Gizmodo)