~ WHAT is IT that "they" want to CONTROL EVERY~THING about ...u & i ? ...what r "they" soooooooooooo afraid ...of ?? do ya EVER wonder 'bout ....it ! ever
Facebook made waves earlier this year when they posted a series of mysterious job listings
searching for candidates with backgrounds in neuroimaging,
brain-computer-interfaces, and haptics engineers. Speculation
immediately began swirling that the social media giant was launching a
new project that would allow us to jack Facebook directly into our
brains without the need for unwieldy machines. Who needs hands, anyway?
Don’t you just hate hands?
She must hate hands.
Now, Facebook has confirmed that
speculation at its annual F8 Developer’s Conference in a speech given by
Regina Dugan, former director of both DARPA and Google’s experimental
research division. Dugan is now head of Building 8, Facebook’s secretive
research laboratory working on innovative technologies such as
Wi-Fi-beaming drones and augmented reality glasses. At this year’s F8
conference, Dugan gave a speech confirming that yes, Building 8 is working on brain-to-brain interfaces that will allow users to type with their minds. This latest research project, according to Facebook’s official announcement, will enable Facebook users to communicate directly with one another using only their brains:
We are working on a
system that will let people type with their brains. It’s a way to
communicate with the speed and flexibility of your voice and the privacy
of text. We want to do this with non-invasive, wearable sensors that
can be manufactured at scale.
Facebook wants to read your thoughts.
Facebook has called this a “silent
speech system” and hopes it will enable users to ‘type’ 100 words per
minute with their squishy grey brains. While many people would
immediately be turned off by the thought of allowing another individual
to ‘read’ their thoughts, Facebook’s statement assures that only the thoughts you want to share will be shared:
This isn’t about decoding
your random thoughts. Think of it like this: You take many photos and
choose to share only some of them. Similarly, you have many thoughts and
choose to share only some of them. This is about decoding those words
you’ve already decided to share by sending them to the speech center of
your brain.
Suuuuure. What’s not to believe? That
Facebook would collect data on your thoughts? Why would they want to do
that? Strangely, the announcement continues to state another research
goal of Building 8: inventing tech that will allow users to “hear
through their skin.” No further details about the creepy-sounding
research have been given, but presumably, that means Facebook would hear
everything your skin hears. It keeps getting better.
Freedom is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.
While this development is enough to
make some Luddites run for the hills and practice their primitive
fire-making techniques, there’s really nothing to be afraid of. When you
type on your phone screen, your brain controls your hand. When you read
a book, your brain decodes the funny little symbols on the page into
language. When we converse, our brains control our mouths and interpret
the vibrations of our tympanic membranes. We’ve been communicating brain-to-brain since the dawn of human communication – just with something in the middle. Cave
art, speech, music, the written word, YouTube – all of these exist for
humans to share our thoughts and ideas with other humans. Sure, the
media might change, but they’re essentially all doing the same thing.
Now that Facebook might remove the middleman, could this truly lead to
communication at its highest level? Maybe once those Facebook engineers
figure out how to get more than 100 words per minute. I’ve got places to
be.
Naturally, this guy got up and said a lot of feel-good buzzwords like “community.”
Of course, questions remain about what Facebook would do with all of
the data it gathers directly from users’ minds. Who would know if
they’re actually reading your every thought? Likely the CIA and NSA,
that’s who.
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