In the coverage of the 2011 CES (i.e. the International Consumer Electronics Show) which has been filling up the techno blogs this week, I saw what, at first, appeared to me a fascinating premise. I saw literally 50 online links to what is purported to be a mind control interface for an iPad. As with most of the fanboy coverage of these big parties, the coverage is mostly a bit over the top and more than a little breathless.
In this case, it was a mixture of both. InteraXon, a California start-up, has what appears to be a means wherein a person can control or manipulate (in a very simplistic manner) a spinning object on the iPad screen. This is accomplished by the user wearing a headband which contains some sort of an electrode to measure alpha and Beta waves (i.e. some specific frequencies).
The fact that we are very near to having consumer products out there which would allow you to control some simple parameters of a graphic display merely by ‘mind power’ is a great move forward… Unfortunately…not for the people at InteraXon, but for the seemingly unwitting press, and the wishful, but seemingly ill informed out there, this does not mean that you can (in the near future) just put on some headband and then open up MS Word and think out a document…
The fact that this sort of technology could come out soon, seems to me to be far more interesting in that lots of cognitive research can now be done with very large statistical samples of people, and there might then be some really interesting outcomes.
And finally, if you are a glutton for some online punishment, just do a Google search for ‘iPad thought control app’ and prepare to be presented with several pages of the same marketing blurb (exactly the same marketing blurb) staring at you from about 100 sites… (I actually considered using the same for this blog post, but my maturity (barely) won…sigh).
CES: Thought-controlled iPad app gets in your head
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/01/ces-thought-controlled-ipad-ap.html
IPad App Ditches Touch-Control for Mind-Control
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/106677-iPad-App-Ditches-Touch-Control-for-Mind-Control
