@glen, cool news! Thanks for posting.
@dennis,
insightful, your thoughts are.
Are we willing to reduce that garbled sub-conscious, imaginative, often intimately shameful, human thought pattern in order to make our thoughts so predictable and understandable that even a machine can translate them into commands?
If communication with the outside world is already reduced to almost zero, having the option to regain some of it is desirable. But the tech wouldn't stop there, would it.
Soon, there'd be basic consumer tech, affordable for most - and soon after that, unavoidable if a computer is to be used. The upper class tech version would include a filter in order to remove unwanted truths from translated thoughts. The intelligence tech version would include antennae for everything, even the removed truths.
And from the age of three, like it was with the iPad, humans would be trained to control their imaginative garble. To be able to control machines. To become more machine-like. To become less human.
On the other hand, being able to read and understand the garble in another person's head, however confusing at first, could be a means to accomplish world peace. Increasing understanding and compassion between strangers.
That's assuming that most ppl aren't assholes/sociopaths/psychopaths but average out being "quite nice" or "a slightly bad person, just like I am" .
In 2014, the world "hello" was transmitted sort of telepathically via email.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innov...ach-180952868/
Back then, the transmission and translation involved the motor cortex. An area of the brain which apparently is "easily" mappable and translatable to machine commands -
and vice versa, which is where certain Parkinson patients can benefit from tech.
If we remember the ape pealing a banana with a robotic arm controlled by his brain. Or the paralysed, bed-ridden lady getting herself a piece of chocolate by only "thinking" the movements of the robotic arm connected to her brain?
A-ma-zing.
It's exciting to read that motor cortex is no longer deemed required as a detour on the way towards accomplishing machine-readable thoughts.
Sends shivers down my spine, imagining a 3-year old toddler manipulating a computer with her thoughts - like when we saw the ease of use of the iPad demonstrated 8 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT4EbM7dCMs
That would mean a true loss of diversity. Diversity - i.e. loss of human individuality which doesn't fit into the cells of an Excel workbook.