There is still work ahead for Emotiv if they want to turn this technology into a mainstream user-friendly product. I don’t see this happening until BCIs tap directly into our neurons though.
Aug 132010
Emotiv is a company created by CEO Tan Le, who appeared on TED.com recently.
They achieved the amazing feat to design and mass-produce a helmet that amplifies and reads one’s brain waves in order to turn a thought or even an expression on the face into a command, which is interpreted and executed by an application on the computer.
I find this to be truly amazing and as I watched Tan Le’s talk, I really wanted to buy this item, which I did right away, actually.
It is supposed to work following a three stage phase
1 when you don the headset, it reads your brainwave pattern at rest.
2 when you want to assign a specific thought to a command, you simply have to concentrate for 8 seconds, which is the time it takes for the application to read your brainwave and compare this new pattern to the first one.
3 the third stage is the implementation stage where you just have to concentrate again on the same thought that will launch the command.
Wait and see. I’m very excited and I just can’t wait for my package to be delivered.
More to come soon.
I don’t know why, but this article from Wired leaves me with a bad taste in the throat.
“Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”, as the adage says. I don’t like to read “Google” and “CIA” in the same sentence.
Let’s just hope this is paranoia on my part.
I was a reluctant reader of this article, as I was a skeptical listener of Paul Saffo’s talk at the Long Now Foundation.
Now I have to say that I find his presentation on disintermediation very thought provocative and engaging.
I discovered the work of MIT Professor Sherry Turkle while listening to her open course a few days ago. I feel much comfort in knowing that great minds have already theorized on the intimacy that exists between technology and self.
They will not come as in a science-fiction movie plot.
They will not come unannounced, born from the mind of some mad scientist to confront humanity as the embodiment of a shocking evolution of our species. They will be our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, our grandparents our children.
They will be our family.
With the combined progress in acute medicine on the field and in body protection provided to soldiers posted in Iraq and Afghanistan, chances have never been better for these men and women who sustained critical injuries to actually survive them.
As a consequence, over the past few years of engagement in the Middle East, the number of amputees has dramatically increased in the US military forces. And if World War II was about penicillin and the subsequent development of anesthesia, these conflicts have already brought tremendous progress in the field of smart prosthetics that will likely change the way we differentiate humans and machines.
Today, people who lost both their legs may still walk without crutches. Some of them even became famous, like athlete and activist Aimee Mullins, Paralympics world champion Oscar Pistorius or Professor Hugh Herr, Director of the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab. And not only do they walk, practice sport and go on with their lives almost as if nothing was the matter. These new figureheads refuse to define themselves as being disabled.
Because nowadays prosthetics have become so technologically advanced, some of these artificial limbs may even provide new abilities which are far superior to that of the human body. Oscar Pistorius experienced
it in a very personal way in 2009 when his application to the Beijing Olympic Games was first rejected by the IAAF on the ground that he was given an “unfair advantage” by the Cheetah carbon fiber blade legs he used on the track.
The fact that the study which substantiated the IAAF decision was challenged later on does not alter the paradigm shift that is silently afoot in our post-modern societies: those who we perceive today as being physically disabled are the cyborgs of tomorrow whose abilities will cause them to be regarded as enhanced humans. And they will be people we know, people we love and people we care about.
Today influential figureheads like Aimee Mullins and Hugh Herr brilliantly express their contention at TED Talks or MIT H2O Symposium that they do not so much wear prostheses that try and imitate their lost limbs, as they enjoy design devices that act as body enhancers. They plan to take advantage of their former disability to enhance their body, boost their physical performance and define new criteria for sexiness.
Aime Mullins made the news in 1998 when she became the first model with artificial legs to stride the on a catwalk for Alexander Mc Queen. Her next move as an actor will be to the big screen later this year with In the Woods.
Professor Hugh Herr was a great mountain climber before he lost both his legs to frost bite in 1982. But even after his accident, he found a way to go on with his passion.
And now he claims to be even a better climber now than before his accident, thanks to the specialized devices that replace his feet and help him secure better support even on the tiniest rock surface. As a prominent scholar at the MIT Media Lab Biomechanics Department and a double amputee, he appears to be very well informed indeed when he refers to these prosthetics as being body enhancement devices that no longer need to imitate human limbs.
So what to make of this?
