We Are Entering the Era of the Brain Machine Interface (Backchannel)

Excerpt from a Steven Levy BMI reality check

"In a 2004 conversation I had with Google’s co-founders, Larry Page was talking about his vision for the future of search. “Eventually you’ll have the implant,” he told me, “where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer.” The remark became notorious, used frequently by reporters and cultural critics as evidence that the ambitions of Google’s founders — and indeed of Silicon Valley in general — would not stop short of a scenario where our very consciousness is plugged into some commercial enterprise’s operating system. The only consolation for those horrified commentators was that the concept was outlandish and impractical, safely consigned to the realm of science fiction.
No more. Last week at Facebook’s F8 conference, former DARPA head Regina Dugan, who leads its research group called Building 8, revealed that Facebook was working on a Brain Machine Interface (BMI) project. Yes, Facebook, whose goal is to connect everyone in the world to its network, now is exploring how to navigate the ultimate last mile problem — the gap between your brain and the keyboard. And for good measure Dugan talked about her group’s work on a second project that could eliminate the screen by communicating text messages through your skin."

We Are Entering the Era of the Brain Machine Interface