As someone who went to Carnegie Mellon and maintains a lot of personal passion about the intersection of neuroscience and computer science, I read yesterday's Computer World article (link below) with great interest. The claim that is the focus of the article is that by 2020 people will have chips implanted in their heads that directly interface with the brain to enable them to interact with computers.
As someone who stays pretty close to neuroscience as a layperson, I'm skeptical about this timeline, but confident in the basic conclusion. Yes, before long humans will have implants in their brains that enable them to fully interact with computers.
What's amusing to me is to see how people react so strongly to this statement (see the reader comments around the article). People react as though neural implants would be some sort of assault on what it means to be human. Others react that it will be the ultimate enabler of mind control, a final crushing blow by the big brother elements in the sky that seek to control us all.
That's all crazy talk. At it's core, what we're talking about isn't that much different than things we already do today in terms of always having technology and the Internet at our fingertips. The only real difference between carrying an iPhone and the scenarios that are discussed in the article is that the interface will be inside of your thoughts rather than in a device that you're holding in front of you.
The development of this technology is also not as far out as you might think. There are already many neural implants evolving TODAY. As one example, cochlear implants, which can restore functional hearing to many deaf people, have already been implanted in more than 150,000 people around the world. They work well and have improved the lives the recipients.
It's not a difficult leap of imagination to think about a cochlear implant being tuned to hear not just regular sound waves, but also other types of information. Imagine being able to "hear" whenever there is a new critical event occurs in the world because an Internet service triggers your cochlear implant to tell you about it. That could be done with the technology as it stands today.
Whether it's 10 years or 20, these technologies will continue to rapidly evolve and will intersect with ultra-high wireless broadband and other developments to create some truly amazing scenarios.
Links:
- Intel: Chips in brains will control computers by 2020
- Machine learning - you can hear the drumbeat in the distance
- Learn about cochlear implants
Tags:
- neuroscience
- mobile computing
- Machine Learning