Interesting new devices scientist's have started to invent now, read about it here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10356484-1.html
Summary of link: "...requires you to strap on a lightweight headset that contains sensors to measure your brainwave activity. Focus your concentration, and a stream of air causes a ball to levitate. Relax your thoughts and the ball drops..."
Anyway, I was thinking that this sort of thing would be the perfect method to train Willpower-not to mention being very fun :)
So...anyone want to bet that games controlled entirely by our minds will show up in the next ten years?
that's a bit creepy. I wonder if it can be proven scientifically.
What do you mean, "proven scientifically"? It was done scientifically. What would you like to be proven?
It was done. Wheter it was done scientifically remains the question. I know that sounds a bit conspiracy theory-like. And it probably is, but I know that it is just something that I probably just don't understand. I just don't get how a device that registers some brain waves makes a ball move to your will. I understand that it can register activity in the brain, but how that manipulates the ball is something I just can't get.
That, and I believe thjat there is more than 'scientific' power in our world.
As I understand it, the ball sits in a tube of approximately its own diameter. At the base of the tube is an air jet, like they have on air hockey tables (but probably more powerful). When the brain wave detector registers brain waves of a certain variety, it tells the air jet to switch on, and the air pressure lifts the ball. When it no longer detects the kind of waves it's looking for, it turns the air jet off again.
Moving the ball is less impressive to me than the ability to distinguish mental states based on brain waves.
Yes, that is what impresses me too, Scott. There are two products available, though. One is like what Scott described, and the other is a maze like device that you have to guide the ball through. I really would like to try it.
What I wonder, though, is exactly what sort of brain waves are detected to make it work. It could be that the device is not controlled by whatever controls our Willpower, but by some other emission. Who knows? Maybe people with strong social ability would be better at it.
Maybe I should go into EEG research :)
The point really is that this is not a machine that interfaces with the brain in the sense we mean by Mind/Machine Interface (MMI) technology. It simply connects an EEG to a reader that looks for specific patters and acts accordingly.
I think Nikolaj can understand that there's nothing particularly creepy about an EEG that lights a light or sounds an alarm when a certain pattern hits; such machines are used routinely for diagnosing such states as epilepsy, catatonia, and other malfunctions in the brain. We also use them to read emotional states, to some degree, such as agitation, and with more connections we can identify which part of the brain is functioning (e.g., we use one part of the brain to remember true events, another to for creating fiction).
What the machine is demonstrating is that with practice we can adjust our mental states to those which the machine is seeking. Thus if "calm" activates the alarm, then when we achieve "calm" the alarm activates; and if instead of an alarm we connect it to the blower fan under the ball, the blower fan activates.
The maze is interesting because it would require minimally three distinct mental states (moving the object forward, turning left, or turning right), and the ability to shift between them fairly quickly (or you'll miss your turn). It's still the same principle of a machine that reads your mental state, looking for specific conditions, and it was at least a few years back that I read of systems that could identify five distinct mental states to use as controls.
As far as using them as game controllers, one would need a tremendous amount of practice before changing between specific mental states was a faster action than moving a finger. We just have that much more practice moving fingers, and it probably requires a significantly smaller change in mental state to do so, and thus less "action".
--M. J. Young
MMI? What, like a direct neural connection?
Mind-Machine Interface. Yeah, a direct neural connection. Like a cyberpunk hooking their brain up to the Net, and unleashing their decker skills to overcome some megacorps' Black ICE.
I think it was at a Toys-r-us that I saw the tower thing. Yeah, its pretty cool. You pretend to be a Jedi, but of course, its nothing of the kind.
Yeah, but the maze one is cheaper, because of not having the Star Wars logo. Plus, the maze is more complex, and can be rearranged.