YOU’VE GOT TELEPATHIC MAIL

[defrog]

ITEM: The US Army has awarded a grant to researchers at University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland to send emails and voice messages using only the power of the mind.

Yes. Telepathic email. EPIC WIN!

Interestingly, this isn’t as wacky as it sounds. The basic technology – “synthetic telepathy”, in which one uses an electroencephalograph (EEG) to read electrical activity in the brain and translate it into a command that computers can understand – has been in development since the 1960s. EEG headsets are already commercially available for things like specialized video games.

Naturally, the Army is thinking Covert Ops, but then lots of Army tech ends up being used in the civilian world (CDMA, for example – i.e. the digital cellular technology that’s most likely running your mobile phone network). Games are one possibility. Interfaces for people with Lou Gehrig’s Disease is another.

Still, EEG is a tinker toy – to get to where you can type out an email in yr head, you need really advanced brain-mapping technology like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) – which is 15 to 20 years away from being available in the form of a comfortable, affordable headset.

Still, that adds up to telepathic email in my lifetime. Assuming I live long enough to see retirement age.

GOD, I love the 21st century.

Brain drain,

This is dF