While reading the Open Source Sex blog by Violet Blue, I came across this post (the blog's NSFW but well worth reading if you're interested in sex and related issues) in my RSS inbox. What caught my eye, besides the rather nice picture, was the bit about the NeuroSky.
Basically the NeuroSky is a device that allows you to translate analog brainwaves into a digital signal. For the moment it looks like the headset is used mostly to determine concentration/relaxation levels, so no surfing the internet like in the Matrix or William Gibson's cyberpunk books... yet.
That being said, it's an interesting step in neuro interfacing with computers, because most devices that came before this have worked off of electronic stimolation to facial/head muscles in addition to brainwaves, like this one.
The big thing that you have to keep in mind is that muscle electical signals are much easier to read than brainwaves, so being able to focus down to the waves specifically is actually really cool.
The Neurosky is currently on sale and comes with a game to help people learn to use the device as well as some other programs that take brain activity and use a visualizer as a really cool bio-feedback system.
At the moment the programs are just around to show the possibilities of the device. There's nothing out yet that really takes advantage of the interface capabilites, but Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, had an intertesting idea up on his blog :
" [...] Imagine an online multiplayer game where you control an avatar that is a wizard in this imaginary world. So far, that sort of thing exists. Now imagine that when you encounter an enemy wizard, you do battle, Harry Potter style, with an assortment of spells. So far, I imagine this already exists too. (I'm not a gamer.)Imagine playing World of Warcraft and being able to cast spells woth your mind, or heck, eventually being able to use a neural interface to be able to interact with the environment. No keyboard or mouse required!
The new part involves integrating voice recognition and the Neurosky headset with the game play. Imagine that you speak the name of your chosen spell, and the game recognizes it and raises the magic wand of your avatar. But to actually apply the spell, you have to concentrate, and the Neurosky headset picks up that brain wave and translates it into the power of your spell.
Imagine that the available spells in this online world are an elaborate form of paper-rocks-scissors, meaning that every spell has a spell it can best and one that can best it. And even those results would depend on how effectively you concentrated to empower your spell. So a weak spell with good concentration could beat a powerful spell poorly done.
And perhaps you can escape from a spell through relaxation, becoming like a vapor to avoid chains, for example. The headset would pick up relaxation brain waves too.
I probably just pissed off some game developer who is working on this exact idea in a top secret lab somewhere. Sorry."
(full post at dilbert.com/blog)
Personally I would love to see what would happen if you could use a neural interface with an art program like Photoshop or the like.
It'll be interesting to see what comes down the line from this, both in terms of software useing the interface, and more advacned hardware that'll evolve from the NeuroSky and similar brain-to-computer interfaces.
