Working in Movement

I'm writing this on a laptop computer with no visible connection to the Internet. Of course, the trick is a wireless network. Just a couple of years ago, wireless networks were geeky, somewhat mysterious, and pretty costly. But now you don't have to be rich and geeky to have a wireless web connection at your beck and call. You can get everything you need at your nearest Best Buy for less than $100 US, and you can be up and running in 15 minutes or so. Moore's Law and business learning curves bring the technology to almost anyone who wants it.

As wonderful as this is, I still need to rely on my clumsy fingers to get these words flowing across this wonderful network. Speech recognition is another option, but that too requires me to move some part of myself to hook up to the computer and then out to the net. This is no big deal, but it would be if my sensory motor system was compromised.

I've written previously on progress in offering a thought controlled interface to specialized devices based on computer technology. Monkeys have been trained use their thoughts to operate a remote arm to play computer games. And last week I wrote about a specialized study at Duke that showed the human brain capable of producing the complex signals needed to control very complex devices.

These are great advances, but they aren't about to become available at Best Buy right next to the routers and network cards. That's because they depend on electrodes being implanted directly in the brain. Not practical, and your HMO probably wouldn't go for it, anyway.

But now the MIT Media Lab in Europe has demonstrated a thought-controlled computer interface that doesn't require neuro surgery. Brainwaves control video game on the BBC site reports on the device and game. The device is called the Cerebrus and it get hooked to the computer with Bluetooth. What's more, the control software seems to have been written in a commercially available software package, C# from Microsoft. Cerebrus looks like a light plastic contraption that might be made out of Lego stuff.

The most logical extension of this idea is for devices that the handicapped can use. But don't be surprised if it shows up, maybe fairly soon, as part of a video game. This would give life to the vision of sci fi authors like William Gibson and (well before Gibson) Vernor Vinge, especially his book True Names.

But all of this stuff still begs the question of incorporating these devices seamlessly into the sensory motor cortex. That's the real miracle here, but it seems to be a pretty ordinary thing for the wonderful learning and adapting abilities of the human nervous systems.