Mind Reading Device Sends Tweet

[Warped]

Ever hear of the Singularity?? Apparently we're inching closer and closer to it:

Twitter messages are so short — a 140-character limit — that you have to really think about what you want to say.

For Adam Wilson, thinking is all he has to do.

Earlier this month, Wilson thought of a tweet (the name for a post to the social networking site) and poof, his computer read his mind and sent the darn thing. At just 23 characters, Wilson's message, "using EEG to send tweet," was done with a computer setup that interprets brain waves.

The technology could one day help patients who otherwise can't communicate finally talk to the outside world. Among them are people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brain-stem stroke or high spinal cord injury.

Step forward

Other mind-reading devices have been developed recently. Other research has suggested brain activity could be monitored before decisions are made, perhaps with a mind-reading hat that would predict what we'll do. One shines near-infrared light into the noggin to glean thoughts.

And some brain-computer interface systems employ an electrode-studded cap wired to a computer to detect electrical signals in the brain and translate them into physical actions, such as moving a cursor on a screen.

Wilson and his colleagues wanted more.

"We started thinking that moving a cursor on a screen is a good scientific exercise," said Justin Williams, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of biomedical engineering and Wilson's adviser. "But when we talk to people who have locked-in syndrome or a spinal-cord injury, their No. 1 concern is communication."

In collaboration with research Gerwin Schalk and colleagues at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, N.Y., Williams and Wilson developed an interface that involves a keyboard displayed on a computer screen. Here's how it works:

"All the letters come up, and each one of them flashes individually," Williams explained. "And what your brain does is, if you're looking at the 'R' on the screen and all the other letters are flashing, nothing happens. But when the 'R' flashes, your brain says, 'Hey, wait a minute. Something's different about what I was just paying attention to.' And you see a momentary change in brain activity."

Like texting

Wilson, who used the interface to post the Twitter update, likens it to texting on a cell phone.

"You have to press a button four times to get the character you want," he said of texting. "So this is kind of a slow process at first."

However, as with texting, users improve as they practice using the interface. "I've seen people do up to eight characters per minute," Wilson said.

The micro-blogging Twitter site, with its basis in very short messages, fits locked-in users' capabilities, Williams said. Tweets are displayed on a user's profile page and delivered to other Twitter users who have signed up to receive them.

"So someone could simply tell family and friends how they're feeling today," Williams said. "People at the other end can be following their thread and never know that the person is disabled. That would really be an enabling type of communication means for those people, and I think it would make them feel, in the online world, that they're not that much different from everybody else. That's why we did these things."

Funding for the project came from the university, the National Institutes of Health and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

Video here

Heard of this technology last year but imagine if everyone who can't talk can use this. Handicapped people are becoming better and better, and one day may surpass regular humans in skills

 

[MJ12]

I'm just interested in how we can use it to drive people of society into a mental state of servitude and obedience.

 

[Warped]

I'm just interested in how we can use it to drive people of society into a mental state of servitude and obedience.

best place to start is probably extremely violent convicted felons so that one day we can harvest resources on another planet/moon and not have to worry about the consequences

 

[Stigmata]

Oh wow, this is incredible. Maybe in ten years I won't have to know how to use Reason anymore?

 

[Warped]

Oh wow, this is incredible. Maybe in ten years I won't have to know how to use Reason anymore?

LOL, I get your point, but come on!! Inventions are usually good but then evil people find a way to exploit the masses with them. I know people at work that can't use their hands that well because they are crippled and it would be nice to see them write something down without having aid

 

[Stigmata]

I meant Reason, not reason.

 

[Vegeta897]

Oh wow, this is incredible. Maybe in ten years I won't have to know how to use Reason anymore?

Why on earth would you not want to know!?

Unless you're talking about being able to transfer sounds in your head into a computer.

That would be the end of creating music as we know it... An entirely new way of doing it, where compositional skills and creativity become one of the only things remaining as necessary for creating good music.

 

[Stigmata]

Why on earth would you not want to know!?

Unless you're talking about being able to transfer sounds in your head into a computer.

That would be the end of creating music as we know it... An entirely new way of doing it, where compositional skills and creativity become one of the only things remaining as necessary for creating good music.

A man can dream.

 

[Jintor]

I'm envisioning a future where coma victims converse with their families in 140 characters or less, and I'm not sure if it's frightening or reassuring.

 

[Azner]

best place to start is probably extremely violent convicted felons so that one day we can harvest resources on another planet/moon and not have to worry about the consequences

Another Planet or Moon like Australia?

 

[VirusType2]

Pre-crime.

his computer read his mind

his computer read his mind

his computer read his mind

It begins.

 

[Xevrex]

I seriously don't understand why all the media and politicians are obsessing over damn Twitter. As far as I can tell, the old men and women of the media, congress, and everywhere else are just trying to feel "in-touch" with modern life, and make themselves feel younger.

Seriously? I'm sick of hearing the words "Twitter" and "Tweet" on the news every single day.

 

[Stigmata]

They're not trying to be "in-touch". They're trying, desperately, to do something that will ensure that the new internet-savvy generation sees them in a more positive light. Unfortunately, while they now have Twitter, we still have google and reddit.

 

[Raziaar]

I would love to be able to do modeling and programming and shit using my mind... where you usually know what you want to do and how you want to do it, but the time it takes to do it is the hindering factor.

 

[VirusType2]

There is no way I'd let someshit read my mind. My mind is ****ing ****ed. I don't even want to know what I think. There is no way I could control it.

It would be like,


Hey baby ... time to grab the cock ... I was wondering if ... I hope you let me cum on your face ... you want to watch some movies ... hopefully not a STUPId annoying chick flick, hopefully something cool ... but ... DESTROY THINGS... I hate this ****ing song. .

Love ya Bye

 

[Raziaar]

There is no way I'd let someshit read my mind. My mind is ****ing ****ed. I don't even want to know what I think. There is no way I could control it.

It would be like,


Hey baby ... time to grab the cock ... I was wondering if ... I hope you let me cum on your face ... you want to watch some movies ... hopefully not a STUPId annoying chick flick, hopefully something cool ... but ... DESTROY THINGS... I hate this ****ing song. .

Love ya Bye

Speaking of ****ed up minds...

Do any of you guys ever sit sometimes... say as you're in bed laying down to go to sleep. You get these vivid images in your head, of really detailed scenes including all the participants in the scenes. Down to the last little detail. It all flashes in your head and you could just like, describe everything at that moment. It seems like a real moment, like something beyond what you have experienced because it comes to you in such a fluid manner and when you weren't thinking anything of the sort AT ALL.

I'm not talking about just some normal daydreaming. I'm talking about when you're sitting there and you're thinking and all of a sudden these seemingly prefabricated images form in your head, that you wonder how they are so vivid and how the **** the plot was formulated, since it's so random and completely separate from anything you were thinking at the moment.

Sometimes I have these moments, and in the course of a couple minutes I'll have a dozen or so of these flash through my head. Murders, rapes, adventures, sex... everything under the sun, with entirely unique individuals each time.


Shit man, I was supposed to be in bed already. Laters.

 

[Eejit]

Handicapped people are becoming better and better, and one day may surpass regular humans in skills

Yep, one day we will be the ones with the Special Olympics, while all the Downs and crippled take over the real one!

 

[VirusType2]

they have hax

computer assisted !

 

[Omnomnick]

Well this sounds stupidly ridiculous.

 

[VirusType2]

Speaking of ****ed up minds...

Do any of you guys ever sit sometimes... say as you're in bed laying down to go to sleep. You get these vivid images in your head, of really detailed scenes including all the participants in the scenes. Down to the last little detail. It all flashes in your head and you could just like, describe everything at that moment. It seems like a real moment, like something beyond what you have experienced because it comes to you in such a fluid manner and when you weren't thinking anything of the sort AT ALL.

Yeah, I'm not convinced there isn't something to it either.

I was laying in bed and as I fell asleep ...

I was asleep, and I was sort of dreaming but I knew I was sleeping, so I probably could have just got up and been real groggy.

Anyway, the vision was of my friends house burning down. The next day I found out my friends house had burnt down. I hadn't talked on the phone. I hadn't had any contact with anyone.


Every time I sleep in this manner, where I realize I am sleeping, whatever I'm dreaming about becomes reality.

I've only experienced this kind of thing 3 times and I haven't been able to force myself to do it. I'm sure I've been in this dream state when I was younger, but didn't make any connection then, and don't remember what I could have been thinking about

If you learn about Clairvoyance, it would seem I have 'Clairvoyance knowing', if that's possible, which I suspect is extremely unlikely. It's more likely that these were just freak coincidences. I mean, we are talking about seeing into the future!

However, there was a very successful man that became convinced he could do it, and he quit his successful career to study it. I think it was Einstein that had some theory about Space and time, and how this could be related. They describe this man and have links discussing his book here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvoyant


Now that it's on my mind, I'm going to double my efforts to have a lucid dream (think that's what people call it) of something and see if it comes true. Problem is - my mind wanders like I said before, and my thoughts are often of misfortune, etc. Not really something I want to make reality. I have a ****ed up mind.

I guess it's because I don't believe in good things anymore. I don't believe in wishing for lots of money, and material things because I never get them. Maybe it's only events that I can foresee.

?

EDIT: OR IM INSANE

 

[Raziaar]

Heh. I don't believe in clairvoyance or anything like that. I'm a huge skeptic.

 

[Warped]

If we all knew eachother's thoughts, we could find people better to be our friends and lovers. Imagine finding that one person who likes the same sexual pleasures as you do. Also it can be a tool for evil, and robots can find out all the sexual things you hate, like butt rape and exploit it to the max

 

[DEATH eVADER]

There is no way I'd let someshit read my mind. My mind is ****ing ****ed. I don't even want to know what I think. There is no way I could control it.

It would be like,


Hey baby ... time to grab the cock ... I was wondering if ... I hope you let me cum on your face ... you want to watch some movies ... hopefully not a STUPId annoying chick flick, hopefully something cool ... but ... DESTROY THINGS... I hate this ****ing song. .

Love ya Bye

Pretty much the same way I think :thumbs: