CL131 Final Paper Brainstorm

From ThisBlueWiki

news: BrainPort and brain quickly self-organizing to novel input -- big machines not needed?

news: software that detects artists' brush strokes to find forgeries -> detects individual brain patterns that repeat in response to various objects seen, for example

translation -- language as a crude mediator to map the true richness of experience from one person to another (see Translator), what if could rise above?

adults learn to use the devices like pidgin speakers improvising a language.. what if kids were fitted with them almost immediately and learned them like a true SIXTH SENSE?

device -> PAN (personal area network) -> radio link to others nearby

implications for utopia and dystopia, including the inability of many people to NOT have their minds associate.. so to reveal a secret, hook somebody up and feed them related stimuli until they helplessly divulge it -- no secrets

translational limits, experiental, (see Translator, you have to have grown up in my world) .. not "true" 100% telepathy, but possibly worlds beyond language

Brave New World, the feelies; Androids, the empathy box;

XML -> machine common language for machine "telepathy", no such thing for humans?

crude implementation could be done TODAY (EEG->brainport); more advanced (brain imager that images the brain faster than the temporal resolution of human perception, say 100Hz -> advanced brainport with many many "pixels", or later, nerve graft) soon

The Translator - multiple worlds (?)

http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/ OpenEEG project

http://www.webkitchen.com/brainathlon/ BrainAthlon - EEG-controlled game

http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/sw/ all software, including Neuroserver, which is TCP/IP capable

Some researchers have been working on brain-controlled interfaces that can be used by subjects who have little control over their bodies. In several studies, subjects who had previously been classi¯ed as being in a coma or \persistent vegetative state" were able to control a computer in order to interact and communicate with others [30][18]. As a result of these experiments, the classi¯cations were removed. Existing brain-controlled interfaces are e®ective, but users often require weeks of training to master the device. Current research in this area is focusing on using neural networks and pattern recognition algorithms so that the computer can adapt to the user, rather than requiring the user to learn biofeedback techniques to e®ectively use the interface [46][40]. -- BrainAthlon thesis, PDF page 10

Swedish artist Ola Persson used an EEG with plants in her \Yucca Invest Trading Plant" project [28]. In this art project, she attached electrodes to yucca palms and used a computer program that buys and sells stock according to each plant's wave activity. Although plants do not have brains, they do emit wave activity in the low delta range, similar to waves that people emit while in deep sleep or in a coma. Interacting with the plants provides a stimulus that a®ects the wave activity, causing the plant to buy or sell stock. One of Persson's yucca palms was quite successful in the stock market, reportedly outperforming index funds.

Listen to 12/2 lecture, part on language!

Just as IM and telephone are reductive media for human expression, so too is language a reductive medium for human thought. Language-is-thought deconstructionists may disagree, but they should try dropping acid and then describing it in words.