Friday
Apr232010
Japan Plans to Market Mind-control Consumer Devices by 2020
Friday, April 23, 2010 at 8:29AM 
Japan plans to develop mind-reading consumer electronics that can be controlled by thought alone and hopes to market them by 2020, according to Nekkei Business Daily.Brain-machine interface technology would analyze brain waves and brain blood-flow patterns detected through sensor-mounted headsets.
Initial ideas are for television to be operated with thought, mobile phones that compose and send text messages by thought, car navigation systems that searches for restaurants when the driver thinks he or she wants to eat, air-conditioners that adjust the temperature when people in the room feel too warm or cold, and robots that know when people need help with carrying heavy loads.
A device that detects brain activity patterns to communicate with a computer already exists -- it was showcased at the CeBIT trade fair in 2008 -- but this lofty concept is reminiscent of how innovators in the 1960s thought we'd all have flying cars by 2000.
Weigh in: Do you think Japan will accomplish this goal on schedule?
tagged 2020, Japan, mind control in Futuristic, Robots
2020, Japan, mind control in Futuristic, Robots 
Reader Comments (12)
Sounds cool.... but no way am I wearing anything that looks like that cross between a bathtub mat and a 70's motorcycle helmet.
As an ex-cognitive electrophysiologist, I can tell you that this is about as realistic as expecting anthropomorphic robots to serve us breakfast in bed in 2010. Sure, they can make games and other consumer devices that use BCI, but we've already got lots of other ways of interacting with technology that are pretty darned quick -- who's going to give up the joystick when it takes a full second or two to generate the right waves to move your little avatar? The dream is always at least a logarithm faster (if not more) than reality. It's a great goal, and maybe in about 100 years all newborns will have neural implants to "jack" them in, which will facilitate this kind of thing, but there's no way that in the next 10 years we'll have the kind of real-time precision that will make the kinds of mass-consumer appeal that these folks are likely dreaming of. There are plenty of "cute" consumer applications in BCI already, but extending the technology beyond relatively simple table-games or excruciatingly long biofeedback-delimited applications (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_consumer_brain-computer_interface_devices) is just not within the realms of feasibility until the public is ready to have an electrode plunged subdermally.
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