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One possible path of development is toward the neural jack - basically a standardized plug port, a USB interface for the brain. Here's a page describing some Ja

One possible path of development is toward the neural jack - basically a standardized plug port, a USB interface for the brain. Here's a page describing some Japanese research toward it: http://www.virtualworldlets.net/Resources/Hosted/Resource.php?Name=FirstNeuroJack http://www.virtualworldlets.net/Resources/Hosted/Resource.ph... I imagine the following: the jack outputs nerve impulses from the brain. Feed these impulses into a robot's control interface/"API", and the user's brain will be able to adaptively learn to control the various functions offered (e.g. flick a finger to make the robot's hand perform the same action). Even better, the robot uses a learning algorithm to associate the nervous data with the correct action through feedback from the user, so that eventually, the user's moving his hand causes the robot to do the same. Voila, exo-suits controlled directly by the brain. If you can pass data back into the brain through the jack, you can return tactile feedback from the robot arm, or even sensations that represent other information, e.g. light or gas levels in the environment detected by mechanical sensors. I doubt human brains can process information that doesn't fit in our spectrum of senses, e.g. mathematical patterns, or abstract conceptual knowledge like an understanding of democracy, but maybe they can accept visualizations or memory vignettes generated by other users. Brains are adaptive and can learn to process unfamiliar stimuli. It's all far in the future and raises a lot of strange and worrisome questions, but it's interesting to think about.

mieubrisse 14y ago
Though I haven't seen it myself, my roommate read this and immediately thought of the movie "Surrogates", wherein apparently this type of control has become the norm for standard interaction between people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogates_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogates_(film) Reading the plot of the movie right after the article definitely gave me the sci-fi heebie-jeebies...
- krenoten 14y ago
  So, that is a possible bad outcome. A possible good outcome could be the elimination of much of the loss of information that happens when we ham-handedly convert our thoughts to verbal, or especially written, communication. Imagine how much we might start caring about each other when we can stream each other's emotions and experiences. Imagine how much we might learn about each other.
  - Retric 14y ago
    Face to Face communication already encodes emotions and experiences fairly well. What's missing from written and or auditory only communication is the body language side channel. While you can feel fear when reading a novel, and joy when talking on the phone etc it takes a lot more effort to evoke such emotions. What would be really interesting IMO is if you could add that side channel to recorded video etc and really feel what a directory was aiming for etc. PS: Learning to communicate over a neural link would be at least as hard as learning a new language, which is why I suggest the side channel approach. Body language is useful and much simpler than say Spanish.
- deleted 14y ago
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chatmasta 14y ago
Actually, human brains have been shown to be able to recognize patterns generated by non-standard sensors. Our brains seem to encode sensory data into a standardized protocol before processing it. For instance, in one study researchers encoded visual data from a camera onto a thin tape on the tongue with a grid of pressure points. Subjects received visual data through their taste buds and were able to correctly process it (i.e., catch a ball). I can't find the exact study right now but it is out there. This is partially the basis of "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins, which led to his founding of Numenta (disclosure: I worked there last summer).
- networked 14y ago
  >Subjects received visual data through their taste buds and were able to correctly process it (i.e., catch a ball). If so, what about less intrusive input methods? I'm thinking of cameras, radars, sonars or entirely synthetic source of visual data with input through a pressure point grid on the user's skin [1]. This could easily have a lot of applications, from supplementing rear-view mirrors in cars with something you "see" all the time to network admins feeling which machines in their server park are being port scanned. The downside of this kind of dermal input would be the mechanical complexity of the "display" that applies pressure to your skin and the relatively low speed. A relevant question is whether if I learned to "see" with pressure applied to one patch of my skin would I be able to quickly start "seeing" with a different one? Another question is whether this scales and will you be able to use multiple inputs at the same time once you've learned one. [1] The closest thing to this that I know of is Northpaw, a haptic compass. It's 1D, though. See http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/ http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/.
- contingencies 14y ago
  Another great book with further discussion and examples on this subject, neuroplasticity, is The Brain That Changes Itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_That_Changes_Itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_That_Changes_Itself In summary from my reading of the book, current research seems to back the perspective that our brains are basically making sense of chaos: there's no standardized protocol - we automatically decode patterns from random streams of input.

mieubrisse 14y ago

Though I haven't seen it myself, my roommate read this and immediately thought of the movie "Surrogates", wherein apparently this type of control has become the norm for standard interaction between people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogates_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogates_(film) Reading the plot of the movie right after the article definitely gave me the sci-fi heebie-jeebies...

krenoten 14y ago
So, that is a possible bad outcome. A possible good outcome could be the elimination of much of the loss of information that happens when we ham-handedly convert our thoughts to verbal, or especially written, communication. Imagine how much we might start caring about each other when we can stream each other's emotions and experiences. Imagine how much we might learn about each other.
- Retric 14y ago
  Face to Face communication already encodes emotions and experiences fairly well. What's missing from written and or auditory only communication is the body language side channel. While you can feel fear when reading a novel, and joy when talking on the phone etc it takes a lot more effort to evoke such emotions. What would be really interesting IMO is if you could add that side channel to recorded video etc and really feel what a directory was aiming for etc. PS: Learning to communicate over a neural link would be at least as hard as learning a new language, which is why I suggest the side channel approach. Body language is useful and much simpler than say Spanish.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

chatmasta 14y ago

Actually, human brains have been shown to be able to recognize patterns generated by non-standard sensors. Our brains seem to encode sensory data into a standardized protocol before processing it. For instance, in one study researchers encoded visual data from a camera onto a thin tape on the tongue with a grid of pressure points. Subjects received visual data through their taste buds and were able to correctly process it (i.e., catch a ball). I can't find the exact study right now but it is out there. This is partially the basis of "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins, which led to his founding of Numenta (disclosure: I worked there last summer).

networked 14y ago
>Subjects received visual data through their taste buds and were able to correctly process it (i.e., catch a ball). If so, what about less intrusive input methods? I'm thinking of cameras, radars, sonars or entirely synthetic source of visual data with input through a pressure point grid on the user's skin [1]. This could easily have a lot of applications, from supplementing rear-view mirrors in cars with something you "see" all the time to network admins feeling which machines in their server park are being port scanned. The downside of this kind of dermal input would be the mechanical complexity of the "display" that applies pressure to your skin and the relatively low speed. A relevant question is whether if I learned to "see" with pressure applied to one patch of my skin would I be able to quickly start "seeing" with a different one? Another question is whether this scales and will you be able to use multiple inputs at the same time once you've learned one. [1] The closest thing to this that I know of is Northpaw, a haptic compass. It's 1D, though. See http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/ http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/.
contingencies 14y ago
Another great book with further discussion and examples on this subject, neuroplasticity, is The Brain That Changes Itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_That_Changes_Itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_That_Changes_Itself In summary from my reading of the book, current research seems to back the perspective that our brains are basically making sense of chaos: there's no standardized protocol - we automatically decode patterns from random streams of input.