Twitter-brain interface offers terrifying vision of the future

We'll be honest, we're always on the lookout for faster and better ways to annoy our Twitter followers with hopelessly mundane status updates, and this brain-control interface from the University of Wisconsin's Adam Wilson seems to be the perfect to get all Scoble on it with a minimum of effort -- you think it, you tweet it. Okay okay, we kid -- it's actually just the usual brainwave-control setup you've seen everywhere, and the average user can only do ten characters a minute, but think of the potential, people. Soon everyone will know that you are "Walking on sidewalk, LOL" almost the second you think it, and all it will take is a mindreading cap paired with a sophisticated computers running an advanced signal processing algorithm connected to the massive infrastructure of the internet via a multibillion-dollar mobile broadband network. That's progress. Video after the break.

[Via Hack A Day]

[superhobo Posted Apr 21st 2009 6:29AM]

Of all the things...Twitter?

[AntiYou Posted Apr 21st 2009 8:38AM]

This thing isn't reading your mind, it's detecting brainwave changes.
The concept is simple really.

Notice all the letters flash in rows.
You're focused on "R", it's white. The rows flash. When the row with "R" flashes, it's unexpected by you, the sudden color change, that is, thus your brainwaves shift a bit.

It detects the change, and records letters MNOPQR since they are all in the row. Then it flashes them vertically. When "R" flashes again, your brainwave changes. It records FLRX4-TWIT, compares them, and R is the one that came up in both. Then it does a few more flashes to make sure.

So it's not actually reading minds, just detecting brainwaves, which is nothing new.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 21st 2009 8:50AM]

I think they just got lazy and hooked up the crt because its easier to interface. And this is some bitchin' signal analysis if it is actually real.

[ThomasK Posted Apr 21st 2009 1:17PM]

interesting idea but the problem is, that about 30 % of people would soon womit or got an epileptic atack ... Such fast blinking is very unhealthy, and faster is worse, so you cannot faster the proces to be quick enough for normal speed "typing" for most of users. I believe more in systems, where you concentrate on one character and the brain monitor detect it. Or FAR SIMPLER method for such stupid action as reading the text - monitoring the eye position. With eye montior you can "type" quite fast (about up to 60 chars/minute), and you need generaly any simple camera for few bucks and a software. But yes, i understand, this is just a technology demo, with no real usage.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 21st 2009 3:11PM]

Twitter is Shit.