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Science Technology

Going Cyberpunk 216

Posted by michael from the need-a-brain-for-my-master dept.
goingincirclez writes "Cnet has an article about the development of a "Neuro-chip". This can be implanted in the brain and is currently being researched for medical uses. The article makes a brief mention the composition of pictures on a computer based on signlas receieved from the brain. Couple this development with the information in this Wired article from last October, and I can't help but wonder how far we are from literally being able to record dreams and thoughts?" On a similar note there are stories about a temperature-sensing implantable microchip and a scientist who claims he can tell whether you've committed a crime.
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Going Cyberpunk More

Going Cyberpunk

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  • The John Ashcroft implantable microchip (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ikoma Andy ( 41693 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:38AM (#5286946)
    "98.6! Take him away, boys, he's guilty of somethin'!"

  • Imagine this idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rooked_One ( 591287 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:39AM (#5286952) Journal
    Right now, we are limited to a mouse and keyboard to compete in games like quake 3.

    Imagine that all you would have to do is hook a little matrix type needle in your head and you could compete based on pure reflexes and just how fast your brain can work, and not on a malfunctioning optical mouse.

    Geez, when I think of it like that, there could be all sorts of implications for something like this from being a lie detector to measureing IQ.

    • Re:Imagine this idea (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...measureing IQ

      70
    • yeah, then you could install this [wired.com] and not even need a monitor
      w00t

    • Re:Imagine this idea (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Hack ( 637833 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:12AM (#5287131)

      You know, the whole "Matrix-type needle" thing bugs me. It's so... clinical. I want a fuckin rock'n'roll guitar jack in my head a la the Shadowrun RPG. If you're going to plug your PC into your head the least you could do is make sure it's a fashion statement and not some kinda wimpy little pin interface.

      I can see it now:
      Dell jack - Comes in beige plastic and lasts about two weeks.
      Toshiba jack - "It's not a jack, it's a mini-jack." For the mobile computing professional.
      Sun jack - "We don't sell jacks." You need com.sun.java.io.jack installed on whatever other jack you have.
      Sony jack - Comes with integrated DRM to fry you if you download MP3s to your brain.
      VIA jack - Mini-ITX version implants the whole PC in your head.
      IBM jack - It's square. And comes in clusters.
      Apple jack - Mmmm yum. Comes in translucent tangerine, but doesn't actually do anything because all the connections are wireless.

    • Re:Imagine this idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bicoid ( 631498 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @12:15PM (#5287989)
      Would you really want a cranial jack? Or would you want to go wifi? Part of me would rather not have an unsightly USB port on the back of my skull, but then, being plugged in all the time woulf make you more vulnerable to hacking. When someone hacks your PC, it's not a huge deal...at worst, you have to reformat your hard drive. But if they hacked your brain...

      I see this mainly as a way to have true input/output from a cybernetic prosthesis, allowing the fake leg to do real things. Maybe hardcore MMOG players (read: otaku) would get it as well so they could truly live in those environments and escape reality. Other than than....do people really want the privacy of their own thoughts violated? A mindreading device would crash and burn because everyone has their own secrets they don't want anyone else to know. Though black market industry might take over...consider the House of Blue Lights from Gibson's Burning Chrome. Or chips in two people's brains (one monitoring input and one controlling output) so that one of the people is basically experiencing and controlling the other body. I could see a lot of market for THAT for government, celebrities, and big business...want to go somewhere but you don't want to have to be followed by bodygards? Use a puppet body so no matter what happens to the body, you're still safe at home.

      Regardless, this is more likely to become a black market technology. You can use it in too many unethical ways that would never be approved by law but still have both the $$ and desire to be done.

      • unsightly USB port on the back of my skull

        God Dammit Bob, your dangling again! Can't you get that fixed?

      • But then again, if one figured out how to program images INTO the human brain....

        *Student sits down in chair, plugs USB cord into jack on back of his head*
        *Flashy lights*
        "Hello class, today's lesson will be on..."

        Think of the possibilities.... Or even better, send a porno STRAIGHT to the brain. Hell, a full adventure. Screw the holodeck, this is better.

        There is no spoon...


      • Or chips in two people's brains (one monitoring input and one controlling output) so that one of the people is basically experiencing and controlling the other body. I could see a lot of market for THAT for government, celebrities, and big business...want to go somewhere but you don't want to have to be followed by bodygards? Use a puppet body so no matter what happens to the body, you're still safe at home.


        Remote control of another person's body just seems...creepy. It would be a whole new way of "selling your body" that is probably worse than the current method (i.e. prostitution).

        On the other hand, it would be the holy grail of women seeking a way to make men understand what childbirth is really like. ;)

      • So what do you do when serial/parallel/PS2/USB ports get obsolete? Do you continue to have them and add another port to the back of your head? Will your head eventually look like the back of my 'puter? Would it be cool or lame to have all those ports? Yeah man check out this cool retro AT keyboard connector I got implanted into my forehead last week. I type and words come out my mouth!
      • "Or chips in two people's brains (one monitoring input and one controlling output) so that one of the people is basically experiencing and controlling the other body. I could see a lot of market for THAT for government, celebrities, and big business...want to go somewhere but you don't want to have to be followed by bodygards? Use a puppet body so no matter what happens to the body, you're still safe at home."

        I suggest you read Neal Stephenson's "Interface", co-written by Frederick George. It's about a politician running for president getting a brain implant after a stroke. I'm not telling any more :)

        It's a good read which raises some issues that are not so far-fetched in regard of recent biochips development.

        Sadly, it is also the book containing the largest amount of typos I've ever witnessed, almost one each page! It seems to be recurent with Stephenson's book; weird. Anybody else noticed this?

        Cheers,
        max
  • its that only shaved psychic genetic freaks that float in a comatose state in a vat underground can tell me who has committed a crime.

  • 5th Amendment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:43AM (#5286972)
    If (and I'm stressing that if) this becomes "widely accepted", couldn't one simply refuse to allow oneself to be tested, as it would really just be another form of self incrimination, which we are protected from by the 5th Amendment? After all, each of these little "brain spikes" would be like the defendant muttering "I did it" each time he was shown a card with evidence on it.

    • Re:5th Amendment (Score:2, Informative)

      by Rewtie ( 552738 )
      In the article, it states that the suspect agreed to the test. So, yes, we (in the USA anyhow) would still be protected under the 5th Amendment.

      Not that I see this technology going to use in many other countries...

      "We have eyewitnesses stating that the gunman was tall, white, with blonde hair."
      "So what? This guy wants to run against me next year. I say he did it, and he must be put to death."

    • Re:5th Amendment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:14AM (#5287147) Homepage Journal
      Blockquoth the poster:

      If (and I'm stressing that if) this becomes "widely accepted", couldn't one simply refuse to allow oneself to be tested, as it would really just be another form of self incrimination, which we are protected from by the 5th Amendment?

      Sure. Just like your right to refuse a breathalyzer test if pulled over by the cops. Except, of course, that if you exercise this right, the state is allowed to revoke your driving privileges effectively immediately. It won't take long before refusing to take the test will itself be taken as a confession.

      • Re:5th Amendment (Score:2, Interesting)

        by LucidityZero ( 602202 )
        It won't take long before refusing to take the test will itself be taken as a confession.


        Not sure where you live, but here in Virginia refusing to take the test already IS a confession. Been that way for some time. Same thing in Maryland and DC.
      • Not that I particularly agree with it, but driving is a privilege that can be revoked by the state more or less at it's whim.

        Innocence is not.

        Which is not to say that I don't think it won't be tried, but that the legal issues are significantly different and there is probably a prayer of the Supreme Court striking it down if someone is convicted solely because they refused to take the test.

    • "Enemy Combantants" do not qualify for Bill of Rights protection.
    • couldn't one simply refuse to allow oneself to be tested

      Don't count on it. If it is possible to do, the state can compel you to do it. Don't think the Bill of Rights can protect you -- that's outdated thinking. We are in a new era now.
    • All the 5th prevents is the government forcing a confession out of you.

      If you plead the 5th, the court and the jury are quite legally allowed to accept that as an admission of some form of guilt - hence why refusing to take a blood alchohol test is grounds for losing your license.

      That is also why DA's will frequently give amnesty to a defendant - by saying "OK, nothing you say on matter X can be used against you" your 5th amendment rights no longer attach. So the government can say "OK, you can no longer take the fifth about what you and Joey did, since it cannot be used to incriminate YOU. If you fail to answer these questions, you will be found in contempt and locked up until you comply."

  • No reading of minds yet (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AntiFreeze ( 31247 ) <antifreeze42@gEI ... minus physicist> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:43AM (#5286974) Homepage Journal
    Quoth the article:

    "For example, you could put slices from brain nerve cells on the chip, apply drugs and see how the nerve signals" and cells react to a particular drug, he said in an interview.

    So reading one's mind is still _far_ in the future. That said, it's still a very cool technology which will allow for more information on how the brain works, and hopefully some serious medical advances.

    • Re:No reading of minds yet (Score:5, Interesting)

      by blindcoder ( 606653 ) <slashdot@wegwerf.anderdonau.de> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:49AM (#5287007) Homepage
      And that's a shame.

      Is there anyone else out there who sometimes when coding has the feeling:

      Dammit... I have all that code in my brain, and now I have to type away hours on the keyboard to put it into my 'puter.

      I really hoped that this feeling would finally be able to subside...
      • That effect may be coming much sooner than genuine Mind Reading (if it's even possible).

        Mind Reading (as the term is commonly used), implies that the subject's actual, abstract thoughts are understood. This could possibly be more difficult than creating a self-aware AI.

        Using some kind of neural-uplink to accelerate your data input speed is a drastically easier challenge- a foolish, wealthy person could even trying having one installed today (no guarantees of fitness or safety, though!)

        Look at research like the CyberMonkey [mit.edu]. (It mentions a biochip as a less invasive, higher resolution way to perform the procedure)

        A willing human could get a bundle of electrodes buried into his cortex, and plugged via a USB interface into your computer. Then, with a lot of practice against a program that gives visible feedback, the subject could learn to control the eletrodes enough to manuver a mouse or keyboard equivalent.

        Any guesses as to how many of his existing muscular systems will be paralyzed by the tampering?
        • A willing human could get a bundle of electrodes buried into his cortex, and plugged via a USB interface into your computer. Then, with a lot of practice against a program that gives visible feedback, the subject could learn to control the eletrodes enough to manuver a mouse or keyboard equivalent.
          There are a number of technical problems that have yet to be solved. Firstly, there's biocompatibility. Any extracellular electrodes implanted in the brain get "walled off" by plaques remarkably quickly. And of course, as this happens the signals from the electrodes become weaker and weaker until they are useless

          Secondly, there's the problem of spike sorting. There is, AFAIK, no fully automatic way to detect and sort spike trains from multiple-extracellular electrodes in real-time. (ie to be able to tell how many neurons are "talking" to any single electrode.)

          Finally, the level of plasticity in the adult brain is an unknown quantity. Primate studies are suggestive, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus on how to best have a machine "talk" to the brain. Should we have the brain learn how to do it? Have the machine learn to do it? Some combination of these? What about for paralytics-- how do you train someone to use a very specific part of the brain. Remember that you're recording from at best a few hundred cells!

          Any guesses as to how many of his existing muscular systems will be paralyzed by the tampering?
          Probably surprisingly few if you have a good neurosurgeon. And if he is paralyzed to begin with it might not matter.

          /joeyo

  • Most important use: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ann Coulter ( 614889 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:44AM (#5286980)
    The Orgasmatron. This, and a replacement for addictive drugs, are the most important functions of cybernetics. And fortunately, they are pretty easy to implement, as opposed to mind transfers or the like.
  • When I can run a rollover cable from my head into the console port of network devices then start the neurological version of tera term I'll be in nirvana.

  • An upside... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The G ( 7787 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:46AM (#5286993)
    You know, I'm glad there are scientists out there who can tell whether I've committed a crime. Because with all these bizarre and incomprehensible laws out there, I sure as heck don't know when I have. Perhaps if I get one of these chip things it will tell me when my code touches a patented technology or happens to break some loser's copy-protection technology from the mid-80s.
    --G
    • Could you sus out the size of the chip they would have to insert in your meat bod to hold the tax code, ouch!

    • Re:An upside... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ch-chuck ( 9622 )
      You pull an old tv out of the attic and check it out, thinking it might sell on eBay. Just as you turn the UHF knob toward the upper end of the dial a paralysing shock knocks your hand numb and a loud thought-voice says, in a friendly, evenly modulated female tone, "I'm sorry, you were about to tune into a frequency band used for private unencrypted voice conversations, prohibited by federal law. I cannot allow that to happen Dave."

      Next day during a break at work, you come across, in the dark fringe areas of the web, a very large prime number - suddenly your field of vision blacks out with a searing headache and the same thought-voice says, "I'm sorry, you were about to view a number which, when uncompressed, contains information that may be used to circumvent video copy protection, prohibited by federal law. I cannot allow that to happen Dave."

    • If it's the report I ran into last year, even his real claims were rather thoroughly debunked. He wasn't much more accurate than an ordinary lie detector test. I believe that the voice stress analyser did a better job. But people keep trying, so sooner or later they'll at least be able to decide if you believe you comitted a crime.

    • Re:An upside... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CommieLib ( 468883 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @12:01PM (#5287880) Homepage
      'There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. ... Create a nation of law-breakers, and then you cash in on the guilt.'

      -Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged"

  • Um... Has anyone NOT committed a crime? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:48AM (#5287004) Homepage
    With laws like the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act and the DMCA, hasn't pretty much everyone broken the law now? It hardly takes a scientists to tell whether someone's a criminal these days. Hell, it's been true for decades that the tax code is so fiendishly complex that no one can understand it, let alone comply with it fully. And if all else fails, there's always the speed limit laws...

  • Imagine...! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by I)_MaLaClYpSe_(I ( 447961 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:50AM (#5287015)
    Just imagine all the horrible ways in which this technology could be abused!
    And as we all know, everything you can think of will be done! What can YOU think of?

    *shudder*

    If there is one lesson we can learn from history, it is that we dont learn from history ~ dont know whose quote

  • Imagine this in (what was) Palladium - (Score:3, Funny)

    by Omkar ( 618823 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:50AM (#5287019) Homepage Journal
    "Error 404 - It looks like you were thinking if Windows Palladium security protocols are breakable."

  • In the beginning was the THOUGHT (Score:5, Interesting)

    by solendril ( 415296 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:51AM (#5287021) Homepage
    Now what REALLY matters is the interface. It's not much good to have a computer wired to your cortex is all you can do is type on your brain's command line.

    What will make this take off is a thought-processor. An interface device that allows the computer to read your mind. The real challange will be in signal filtering; I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I think about a lot of random crap during the day. How to distinguish legitimate commands from my daydreaming about travel or movies or p0rn?

    Whoever invents this will make Einstein look like a small time celebrity.
    • I you want an interface to deterministic system (like computer) then you have to train you brain to think more deterministically (like using interactively interpreted programming language).

      Voice, GUI are not good for it as they are interfaces designed for pre-existed I/O devices as hands, mouth, ears and eyes.

      What would be a real improvement is some virtual-reality navigation interface. However, it won't substitute programmable sctable interface.

      But look, if you smart enough then GUI is not enough for you on your today's PC - you run CLI with good shell (at least BASH, using a mix of Perl, Python and Tcl). For example, on GNOME you use nautilus and other GUI stuff for navigation, but you allways create your on scripts, batch files, menu items etc.

      The more important question is: what scipting language to use in brain? I think that this time it should not be imperative language. I would prefer something more mathematical, like Haskell. Perhaps I would use Lisp for driver extensions on that chip. And I'd like to keep many of personal database records in Prolog.

  • Why a chip? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by joel8x ( 324102 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @09:51AM (#5287023) Homepage
    Who in their right mind would get a chip implanted in their body? With technology advancing as fast as it does, you would be outdated in a couple of years! A better Idea would be a port that can be easily accessed that can support future upgrades without surgery.

    • Re:Why a chip? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Rewtie ( 552738 )
      Why a port? They suffer the same technology advancement as a chip. SCSI, SCSI-II, UltraSCSI, SuperFantasticWoweeSCSI... USB, USB2... PCMCIA/PCMCIA2... technology simply will not stand still.

      Now, a piece of re-imprintable silicon would be an interesting concept. Something that sits just beneath the epidermal layer, and is "flashable", thus reprogrammable. That would be interesting.

    • Re:Why a chip? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by axxackall ( 579006 )
      For that port you need a port controller (aka SCSI, Firewire, USB or other I/O) and that requires the chip. And you need a smart controller in orer to constantly adapt to constantly adaptable brain.

      Your SCSI controller is not too diff from what you had 5 or even 10 years ago. Why? B/c since the beginning it has been designed right.

      Same thing here, once the neuro controller will be designed righ, you'll upgrade mostly your gateway software.

      P.S. I wonder if the IP address of our brains will be IPv6, when will we need IPv8 ?

    • Re:Why a chip? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by SpaceJunkie ( 579366 )
      How about an "Industry Standard Bioport"... One that needs to be nicely lubed up before interfacing... Hehe...
      But to avoid standard port and interfacing problems - how about complementing the imprintable sillicon idea(aboce posting) with some kind of broadband wireless system - thus eliminating plug in ports... 802.11b in my head. Of course given current safety concerns over mobile phones - it might be better to have the antennae implanted in your arm than annywhere near your head...
      That also gives us a whole new paradigm of mobile communications - datavising! Cool - use your technology to contact your mates, send them images, text or just thoughts... Maybe even patch them to a real time feed. How long before we see something like Sensorium Movies? A long time maybe - but at least we acknowlegde the possibility now.
    • A better Idea would be a port that can be easily accessed that can support future upgrades without surgery.

      Like many such devices, a port requires an interface between two different kinds of signals, in this case a signal coming from the computer, and the signals that the neuron understands in the form of weak electrical currents (or chemicals) hitting the right spots in the neurons (to sum up my knowledge on THAT subject;).

      This chip provides a form of that interface, in that it can detect neural activity (I doubt this chip can stimulate activity in the other direction). In a sense you're right in that there will be a progression in the development of these chips and their implementation/implantation in animals, and then humans (this is probably a textbook case of the value of animal research). The trick is really to provide some kind of interface that provides communication with the computer without damaging existing biological structures. It might take more than one implant in order to achieve holodeck-like full sensory immersion (although this is one of the few ways to believably achieve it).

      I'm sure there would be the usual bandwidth issues and so on. Perhaps (as an earlier post suggested) a simple voice interface would be easier to implement. Then we could all experience schizophrenia. ;-)

      [voice from nowhere interrupting sex]
      "This is Bill Gates IVclone. You MUST INSTALL THIS CRITICAL WINDOWSISME SECURITY UPDATE NOW! YOU CAUGHT A V-MAIL INLOOK DISTRIBUTED VIRUS AND ARE FLOODPINGING OUR HEADQUARTERS!"

      Ah, the wonderful world of the future. I can hardly wait. ;-)

    • Re:Why a chip? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MxTxL ( 307166 )
      Well, while everyone is dreaming and throwing around crazy cyberpunk ideas, i'll throw one out. Sure it's equally as unlikely as anything everyone else is spouting off about, but somewhat cool none-the-less.

      Instead of implanted chips or ports, just inject people with a trillion or so microscopic robots. Kinda like the idea of 'mites' from Stephenson's 'Diamond Age'.
      Probably, these little suckers would be too small, to do more than one task, but for that one task they could be really adept and each one (or each hundred or so) could have it's own job. One batch could be 'go seek out the visual cortex neuron 148 and report back what it's doing' and other batchs would have other equally important tasks. Some for input, some for output, others for infrastructure, conceivably others for security, etc... The lot of them work together as a little P2P network passing short-range messages and eventually it all gets reported back to the central computer... which could then do all the nifty ass crap that you can imagine by being brain-linked to a computer. Infinite recall, knowledge, processing, simulations... you're in the matrix now.

      The little critters wouldn't ever be obsolete cause you could replace them from time to time by getting a shot... there is a lot of redundancy, and (assuming you have the micro technology to make them in the first place) would be probably pretty damn cheap to make and use.
  • here's [google.be] what google thinks about such classic lie detectors.

    My guess is that in 20 years this chip will turn out to be a hoax tool that had people scentenced for nothing. I say drop it.
  • ...makes a brief mention the composition of pictures on a computer based on signlas receieved from the brain.

    No more sneaking away to watch my pr0n! =P
  • to The Matrix :)

    Seriously though , as science gets better and better at capturing our thoughts and dreams the applications for such technology are limitless. Imagine playing a video game that could adapt to your thoughts.
    "Grand Theft Auto 10: Drive any type of car you can think of."
  • In Cyberspace Russia, all those hackers will try to port Linux to YOU!

  • Two questions... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jack William Bell ( 84469 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:06AM (#5287094) Homepage Journal
    Suppose you could get a chip inplanted in your brain that would allow you to control a computer with thought. Two questions:
    1. Would you be willing to be a beta tester?
    2. Would the answer to question One depend on the operating system in ran?

    • 1. Would you be willing to be a beta tester?

      That would depend on what it could do. And it would depend on how many people died/went insane during tests before the beta

      2. Would the answer to question One depend on the operating system in ran?

      Yes. It would have to be open source if I should trust it. It may be developed as a cathedral instead of a bazaar but I would not trust it if I couldn't inspect it myself. If you hide it you have a reason to, and in this case that wouldn't be profit since the money could be made from the hardware

  • And how is this cyberpunk? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lethyos ( 408045 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:12AM (#5287133) Journal
    I didn't know that subjecting yourself to mental control and monitoring was cyberpunk. Geez, I guess it's time for us to wake up and stop being so anarchist!
  • If I had a chip in my brain that allowed people to see what I'm thinking, there should be a law stating women aren't allowed within 20 feet of the monitoring equipment.

    *SLAP*
    YOU PIG!!!
    *SLAP*
    .
  • On a similar note there are stories about a temperature-sensing implantable microchip...

    Yeah, I saw one at Rite Aid just the other day. It's called a digital thermometer and you implant it for 30 seconds - lo and behold it tells you your body temperature. Why would physically (ie: surgically) implanting a device be of any greater benefit?
  • Time to dust off my copy of Michael Crichton's "The Terminal Man". Or maybe score a copy of the 1974 movie with George Segal.
  • I've got plenty of credits and now with these neuro-interfaces I can start building pleasure domes. Thanks!

  • No one understands the brain (Score:4, Informative)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:33AM (#5287248)
    can't help but wonder how far we are from literally being able to record dreams and thoughts?

    If you read material on brain research, you'll quickly come to the realize that we have no idea at all how the brain works. The theories are widely varying and contradictory. The chip in this story is a hack, like shocking a dead frog and watching its muscles twitch. You can do it without any kind of clue, but going from there to a full understanding of things is a gargantuan leap.

  • Expensive, but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by barryfandango ( 627554 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:36AM (#5287263)
    The prohibitive cost of a sub-cranial interface could always be reconciled by having banner popups in your field of vision.

  • Decisive (Score:2, Informative)

    by ralico ( 446325 )
    To Quote a section of the Yahoo article:
    From a scientific perspective, we can definitively say that brain fingerprinting could have substantial benefits in identifying terrorists or in exonerating people accused of being terrorists," Farwell said"

    Sounds like a definite maybe?

  • Rules after having brain-chip implanted..... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dragon213 ( 604374 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:54AM (#5287390)
    Rule 1: Never give your brain-node's IP to Slashdot!!!
    Rule 2: See Rule 1

    • Never give your brain-node's IP to Slashdot!!!



      The real-life equivalent, never work for a corporation.



      The requests for meeting attendance, corporate emails, congratulating Julie for her baby or bob for bowling 100, followed by warnings of impending doom for the company if the CEO cannot get internet access to reach E-Bay, make a potential slashdotting look like a smoking break in comparision.


  • Guess this really gives new meaing to the Billy G. Borg Icon.

  • A question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bendebecker ( 633126 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:00AM (#5287430) Journal
    What if a kid is thinking about porn and soem computer neuro-chip creates a picture of what he's thinking about? Would it be a crime for him to look at the pictures he himself created? Would the police try to use these chips to monitor your activities? Would an employer get sued for sexual harassement for picturing his secretary nude?
    This reminds a lot of 'Forbidden Planet' were an entire race of beings is wiped out by their own subconcious thoughts. Some things in the mind should stay in the mind.

  • Missing the point (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jabber3776 ( 649927 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:06AM (#5287469)
    Really let's think about it. If we can record our dreams and thoughts, especially for those of us that do our best writing in our head and can never seem to get it on paper, it could be a useful tool. What about those that are deaf and blind? A way that would have the ability to reconnect the broken links. The possiblities are endless. It's not about creating super human machines; or making big brother. It's taking science and and medicine a step further. A way to help build new and better interpersonal commuinications for those that have trouble with this.

    • Re:Missing the point (Score:2, Insightful)

      by koan ( 80826 )
      Dreams require interpetation, even if you could record them you would need a machine or software that could interpet it, if you could do that then AI would be possible at that point.
      Other than that you're stuck with on/off and basic items liek that.
      I'm no expert but I play one on /.

  • One step at a time... (Score:4, Funny)

    by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:23AM (#5287592) Journal
    The problem here is that most of humanity still needs to have a BRAIN implanted before they can start thinking about brain enhancing chips.

  • George (Score:2, Funny)

    by UncleAwesome ( 259162 )
    Its not a lie if you believe the lie.

  • Sure, laugh now guys, while you can. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Xilinx_guy ( 551837 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:43AM (#5287741)
    It's easy enough to poke fun at the crude brain implant IC's developed so far... It will be a whole lot less funny when the state of the art advances to the point where they start to become actually useable. Right now, high tech corporations boost the effective IQ of their employees by buying them the best computers and software available. We all benefit from this and enjoy the perks of having a nice fast machine and the latest software. What do you think will happen if implant IC's can be shown to boost effective IQ by 30 or 40 points? Or rather, if it boosts design productivity by 50% or more? They guys who have implants will be in tremendous demand, while those who lack them will be consigned to writing technical documents, or customer support. It could get downright nasty, trying to compete with guys who can literally outthink you by a wide margin by virtue of their hardware link. It's bad enough that we are starting to see tech jobs moving to India and other 3rd world sweatshops, but brain implants will bring the digital divide to a whole new level. All this carping aside, I sincerely want an implant. Voice recognition sucks, and fingers and mouse are rarely fast enough to do everything I'd like. Once they've been shown to be medically safe, I'll probably take the plunge. Maybe in 10 years, but I hope in 5.

    And to answer the unspoken question: Can FPGA's be used in your brain? I say this: Get Real. Current FPGA technology has no possible application. Maybe in 5 or 10 years, when we have conquered the leakage problem, and have developed fuel cells that run on glucose. But I don't see it, since an ASIC dedicated to brain interface functions will be a far superior solution. FPGA's may evolve into a future computing fabric, so they may have useful applications in external hardware, but it will be a very distant descendent of FPGA's that are finally used for in-body implants.

  • Knowing this crowd, if you actually had implantable computer chips it wouldn't be long before you would see the following: 1. Somebody running linux and a webserver from their brain. "Pass me the tylenol, my heads' been slashdotted!" 2. DRM the hard way... your vision blanks out whenever you see material you haven't purchased. 3. A beowulf cluster of human brains... of course if you did this in your average marketing department you still wouldn't end up with much....

  • Mandate brain implants to close the analog hole (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonym0us Cow Herd ( 231084 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @12:10PM (#5287947)
    At a press conference today, the RIAA announced that it is happy to hear about the development of this technology. The RIAA plans to contribute funding to the development of brain implants that can recognize whenever you hear, see, or even think about any copyrighted material. "In order to fund this project through to completion", said Hillary Rosen, "we will need to raise the prices of CD's. But not to worry. This price increase is only temporary."

    The MPAA did not return our calls prior to press time, but it is widely anticipated that the MPAA will also be creaming their jeans over this news.

  • I don't see how this could work against terrorists (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sbaker ( 47485 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @12:12PM (#5287973) Homepage
    > ...a scientist who claims he can tell whether you've committed a crime.

    Clearly he can only tell whether you've *knowingly* committed a crime - your brain temperature doesn't change just because a new bill was signed into law without your knowledge.

    Therefore it can't possibly work on people who believe that what they are doing is legal...or 'right'...or perhaps 'ordained by God'.

    Hence, I find it hard to believe it would be much use against a majority of terrorists as he claims.

  • If one truly doesn't know they committed a crime (mental disability or lack of knowledge), then it wouldn't be detectable because there would be no telltale "guilt" signal. If you truly believed that you didn't commit a crime, it would also likely fail to detect a "guilt" signal signature either.


    This would only really work reasonably well with people who KNOW they committed a crime and have some emotional guilt/fear reaction associated with the event. Otherwise, signals would be just background noise.

  • Some have commented that the inner workings of the brain are still an unknown. But I wonder if this might not be a good thing.

    There's some thought out there that our basic sentience may have its source all the way down to theoretical quantum effects in the structures of the brain. The tiny effects are then amplified into macroscopic results via chaos theory (butterfiles affecting the weather and all that). The macroscopic results are, of course, all the annoying, pig ignorant and stupid things people do every day.

    This is sheer theory, but it is discussed in many places. There's a decent book on it: The Quantum Brain by Jeffrey Satinover. A controversial subject, but interesting. Not sure I buy it but I remain open minded.

    Regardless of the source, these learning and adaptive processes inside our little brains are dense and difficult to fathom, but we might not have to *completely* understand them. If these chips can provide an interface that is at least in the general ballpark of what the brain wants to deal with, the adaptability of of our brains may rise to the occasion and optimize the link for us.

    There may not be such a thing as a standard chip interface. Each one may have to be tuned and programmed for the individual user. People with highly adaptive brains may get a discount because the chip vendor doesn't have to do as much work. ;-)

    If we can make this work, we can all be like John Doe over on Fox and have mountains of knowledge at our mental fingertips. Maybe that's a good thing.

    Of course, the information is only as good as it is. [CLICHE]Garbage in produces garbage out.[/CLICHE] You could raise a group of people in isolation and download a complete alternate history to their infomation chips.

    Then again many people today believe alternate versions of history through which they have actually *lived*, so we don't need chips to create legions of deluded ideologues. ;-) We seem to have that ability built into us. Maybe it's just quantum weirdness...

  • Not too bright a scientist? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Strange Ranger ( 454494 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @01:08PM (#5288453)
    Brain fingerprinting works by measuring and analyzing split-second spikes in electrical activity in the brain when it responds to something it recognizes. ...if a suspected murderer was shown a detail of the crime scene that only he would know, his brain would involuntarily register that knowledge. ... A person who had never seen that crime scene would show no reaction.

    So the detail is blood in a clawfoot tub. Maybe you have a clawfoot tub? Maybe you watched a dozen different movies with blood/tub scenes. Maybe you have the same exact Teledyne Waterpic that the murder victim has hanging in his shower. You could recognize anything for any number of reasons. Not only that, but your memory changes over time. After 23 years that guy could have been imagining innocence scenarios for so long it looked to the scanner like he was innocent.

    Sorry, I don't buy it at all.

  • No, I'm not nodding off.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @01:38PM (#5288723)
    ...I had to reboot my brain.
  • Great chip. The next step is to figure out what to actually do with these new I/0 capabilities.

    My former undergrad prof, Dr. John Donoghue at Brown University, is at the cutting edge of research into neural implantable interfaces.

    Monkeys Demonstrate Thought-Controlled Computing [techextreme.com]

    Monkeybrain Joysticks [arts4all.com] Excerpts:

    A rhesus macaque monkey at a Brown University laboratory can move a cursor on a computer screen just by thinking about it - playing a pinball game in which every time a red target dot pops up, the monkey moves a cursor to meet the target quickly and accurately. The monkey plays the game mentally, controlling where it wants the cursor to go by thinking.

    The primary research Nature article is Connecting cortex to machines: recent advances in brain interfaces [nature.com]

    Cheers,
    Joel

  • Way to overhype a strory... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mac Degger ( 576336 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @02:01PM (#5288944) Journal
    Go /.! Now you don't even bother to have the submitter read the article!

    The Infineon chip doesn't connect to the brain. You put tiny slices of brain matter (neurons) in the chip (in a suspension inside the chip) and can then run current through those slices. No direct brain connection at all. And of course, those signals through the neurons on the chip can be recorded and put on screen...but no "recording of signals from the brain"...dunno where he even got that from. Must be on crack.

    Still, it's a cool development; as the article says, we can now do better research over a longer period of time, for a better picture of how neurons work.

  • Please... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Quadriceps ( 549678 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @03:35PM (#5289760)
    Everyone is letting their imagination run away with them. Not that that's a bad thing (that's the premise of great sci-fi) but there's nothing in the articles to suggest we'll have microchips implanted to record thoughts or USB ports on our skulls any time soon. As an MD I know a little something about neuroscience as well as implantable devices, and can assure you those scenarios are least a hundred years off, and probably a lot more. We have barely scratched the surface of how memory and thought are encoded, much less capturing that data.

    Both of the articles discuss observing only electrical activity. While useful, it is analogous to an EKG, just a graph of currents that can tell us the heart rate yet gives us little functional info beyond that. It can't tell you what the blood pressure is, or what the quality or quantity of the blood components is. The devices described are only a little more invasive than a device already in use to diagnose certain brain abnormalities: the electroencephalograph (EEG). It may diagnose epilepsy and sometimes causes of dementia, can suggest the occasional tumor and can tell us a person is brain dead. That's about it. It certainly doesn't tell the world what you're thinking, your sexual preference, or your illicit file-sharing habits.

    The article on brain fingerprinting makes clear (at least to me) that the machine is of the same concept as a lie-detector test, though perhaps more advanced and reliable. IMHO, the test is not self-incriminating any more than that damning fingerprint you accidentally left at the crime scene.

  • New Scientist has a fascinating article on neural chips this week. Unfortunately it isn't available to non-subscribers or I'd post the link. (It is one of the main articles and not a news story)

    It was going through the problem of how your immune system attacks most neural implants and methods for getting around this. You end up with "fuzzy" implants that don't look anything like science fiction stories typically portray them. They are still having problems with electrical signals because of the fuzziness. Still it was a very interesting article and suggested that these things will work different than we may have expected.

  • Blue screens of death are truly blue screens of DEATH. If you forget one thing, you forget everything. Bloat takes over all that unused brain matter.
    If you replace body parts more than five times you have to buy another brain unless you pirate a corporate brain. Microsoft owns your soul and that may change at any time at their option.

  • The Neurochip does not have anything to do with the article about sensing criminals.

    Let us see... first of all the neurochip is based on technology developed in caltech 5-10 years ago. What does it do? It allows single (or a small number of) neurons to connect to the chip, so that their signals can be accurately measured. Now, everyone, remember how many neurons there are in the brain. Alright? Measuring a bunch of neurons does not help a lot really. It does not have anything to do with 'reading your mind'. Especially when the part of the mind that is being 'read' is only one part in a billion. So, why is the neurochip important? Because it allows to measure and send signals to neurons without using electrodes. In fact, instead of putting an electrode in the brain, you take a slice of the brain and put it in the chip. They used SLUG BRAINS, for gods sake. This is not an implantable chip! It is the reverse! It is about studying neurons in an isolated environment.

    The temperature-reading implantable chip is basically just a digital thermometer with a radio! It is a device for animals! It is an implantable device, but does not have anything to do with the brain.

    The guy that did the criminal analysis research used a very well known mechanism whereby there is a particular spike in activity whenever someone sees something that he recognizes. Again, this has nothing to do with implantable devices and especially nothing to do with temperature. It is a short-time-scale electric potential.

    This story really really sucks. It presents three completely unrelated links that it somehow glues together. Get a grip!

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