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The Singularity is Near
Telepathy has always been a sign of kookiness but synthetic telepathy heh that's just around the corner.
The U.S. Army is developing a technology known as synthetic telepathy that would allow someone to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. The concept is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG...
The idea of communicating by thought alone is not a new one. In the 1960s, a researcher strapped an EEG to his head and, with some training, could stop and start his brain's alpha waves to compose Morse code messages.
Here is a previous post in the series.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on October 14, 2008 at 01:56 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
Sounds similar to how robotic prostheses are being developed. Not really telepathy, just learning and recognizing relatively rudimentary brain patterns.
Posted by: Anderson S. Childress at Oct 14, 2008 2:05:31 PM
Nice, I can't wait for the mind control. It will be like the new puppet master villain on Heroes.
Posted by: UtOh at Oct 14, 2008 2:09:05 PM
Wasn't there an article about something similar about 2 years ago. Essentially, there is a device that can guess what you are thinking about saying by reading impulses sent to the vocal cords. A simple wireless connection between that and a cochlear implant would have the effect of telepathy.
Posted by: Nate at Oct 14, 2008 2:47:23 PM
There was an episode of Fringe about this kind of technology. Some poor schmuck is accidentally part of the network after participating in a psych study in college and gets sent messages about evil happenings.
Posted by: Katie at Oct 14, 2008 3:16:39 PM
Must get me a Pentagon contract.
Posted by: otto at Oct 14, 2008 3:17:59 PM
If you don't immediately think about Doctor Octopus, there's something wrong with you.
Posted by: NutJob at Oct 14, 2008 5:28:50 PM
I remember a marxist econ prof telling our class one day about how remarkably worse off we would be without the innovations spurred on by the U.S military.
Posted by: John Pertz at Oct 14, 2008 6:23:56 PM
John Pertz,
You didn't perchance go to Stevens Tech, did you?
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at Oct 14, 2008 9:57:40 PM
The really, economy changing, impact of this is of course the removal of the need for keyboards on laptops, phones, MP3 players....
And "Doctor Octopus"? I thought of "Firefox", for those of you who still remember the early 1980s.
Posted by: doctorpat at Oct 14, 2008 10:05:22 PM
Actually, I'll be one of the first to get it. Then I can finally - silently - express my annoyance with blowhards at meetings with my other 'tudinal and enhanced pals.
Posted by: StreetWalker at Oct 14, 2008 11:22:24 PM
There's a Jerry Pournelle novel from the 1980s about LA in the near future. The top two managers in a corporation have had company-subsidized skull operations to implant radio transmitters with brain interfaces in their heads. At big meetings, they silently communicate with each other and then tell their underlings what they've decided. The underlings find it very annoying.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Oct 15, 2008 6:49:17 AM
In fringe, it was a bad thing, apparently...
Posted by: Abhi at Oct 15, 2008 10:04:27 AM
Vernor Vinge: A Deepness in the Sky
Posted by: flix at Oct 15, 2008 10:09:28 AM
this is a scary thing. it will take a lot of mind control. i know that i sometimes think bad thought and say bad things in my head with this technology you could find yourself telling someone something that is not intended for them to know. I know it seems cool but i really feel as if there are many othere things that are need to be researched other than this.
Posted by: vichunt at Oct 15, 2008 4:33:06 PM
Fascinating idea but it has to have some health risks. At first it sounds like an idea formulated in a drug rehab , but then after some thought I guess anything is possible. Just as long as it doesn't affect my sleep!
Posted by: Joseph at Oct 16, 2008 1:50:42 PM
