Thought Recognition - From the 14 yr old

The next big thing from Microsoft will probably be TR - "Thought Recognition" Software. As most of you know, or can immediately tell, TR pretty much means the ability to control your PC or Server(s) (or pretty much anything else electronic or computer-chip controlled) through simple application of thought.

Apparently created by a child-genius (when he created a TV remote for his grandmother that changed channels with her thought waves) named Rupert Tollefson, Bill Gates immediately flew the kid in to Microsoft HQ and offered his family some ungodly amount of money and stock options for the child to live on-campus and spend all day in a room full of wires and PC's. At the time the article was published,

Even more amazing is the "Correction" section at the end of the article (which was appended at a later date, as it does not exist in an early replication of the article, found at www.xent.com... ) :
Nine-year-old genius Rupert Tollefsen does not exist, although the editors would like to thank Andrew Rowny, his mother, Lori Larsen, and his grandmother, Greta Larsen, for lending his presence to our writer, Bruce Barcott, and photographer, Rick Dahms. Seattle Weekly apologizes for these, and other, unregrettable errors.


Heh, seems to me like Microsoft applied some pressure and got some much-needed disclaimer added to the article. Who knows? You decide...

Link here:
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www.seattleweekly.com...

[Edited on 14-4-2004 by Cappa]

thought recognition happens every day, without it i would not have typed this post lol.

it is a very interesting article.

Originally posted by ausconspiracies
thought recognition happens every day, without it i would not have typed this post lol.

it is a very interesting article.

Yes indeed, but the focus is eliminating the physical necessity (the actual act of typing, using the mouse, etc.). I'd also like to mention that, given thought recognition succeeds, it could possibly unite all of humanity via a mental/computerized wireless networking system, in which man could communicate with man whereever he could connect to this network, mentally. Like instantaneous messaging.

This is a reality, just not that story. Go google for monkey controls artifical limb and see what you find.

There is a thread on this already about using a pre=programed brain wave pattern to control any electro or electro/ mechincal circuit.

For use in security measure or any other host of things DARPA wants to use it for. A major college is currently doing the research work and so far they have a monkey controlling a robotic arm in another room without being directly connected to it.

They started by attaching sensors directly to the monkeys brain and had him use a handle to control a robotic hand to get food or something. Then they put a tv screen like pong style graphics that matched the directional output of the arm to movement on the screen. This allowed them to track the optical brainwave pattern in association to required movement. Then they took away the robotic arm and just left the tv and the monkey was forced to "make" the onscreen graphic move in the manner needed to get the "food, treat , etc" getting a visual confirmation back through the system the computer would move the onscreen graphic according to the monkeys brainwave. Then they took the tv away completely and when the monkey wanted the "food, treat, etc" it would "think" and the required "program" would initiate on the computer and the robotic arm would respond accordingly

209.157.64.200...

www.sciencedaily.com...

www.darpa.mil...

www.wired.com...

www.popsci.com...

www.grailwerk.com...

lists.envirolink.org...

www.trnmag.com...


Here you go, these are some links for you to read on this very subject.

Microsoft software hooked up to my brain... What happens when it crashes? But it is actualy a pretty good idea, allowing people who cannot normaly use todays technology to use it.

Originally posted by Cappa

I'd also like to mention that, given thought recognition succeeds, it could possibly unite all of humanity via a mental/computerized wireless networking system, in which man could communicate with man whereever he could connect to this network, mentally. Like instantaneous messaging.

Will there be a firewall for thoughts that the person would like to keep private? There are a lot of ignorant people or people with less than good intention around who would put this to use. But this all is hypothetically speaking of course...

Ok a couple reasons it wouldn't work (or would be more trouble than it's worth):
1) our brains operate on electromagnetic impulses in an analog form. These pulses are very, very weak. The radio impulses emitted from an operating computer are much stronger than the ones coming from our brains. Even if you could build a receiver to interpret these impulses it would get a huge amount of interference from the tower sitting on/below your desk. Where I am sitting now my tower is 21 1/2 inches from my head. For this to work your PC box would have to be in a different room or have some sort of shielding on the case.
2) every persons brain uses slightly different pulses because of the slightly different "firmware" (your neurons and their connections) in your head. So the software would have to "learn" what impulses from your brain meant what. These impulses would vary hugely depending on the person. Instead of having a language like english and learning the nuances of it for each person, (as in speech recognition), the software would have to build a different language for each person. Windows Xp's speech learning is OK, but not anywhere near good enough for a brainwave sensor. The accuracy would have to be almost 100% otherwise people will just stick with keyboards. Controlling a robot arm is fairly simple. Controlling a computer with an interface like windows is another matter entirely.
And as someone else said, I wouldn't trust microsoft's software in my head either.

This artcle had me laughing before i even read it, and now that i have done so, here is my reasons why it is a joke:

1. The date of the article is April 1...hmmm...sound foolish?

2. The sub-heading "A Prodigy's Redmond Isolation Lab Faces 'Outing' Over Life Secrets" spells APRIL FOOLS...

3. The article is just too unbelievable...

Anyway, in the 'letters to the editor' section for this article, www.seattleweekly.com..., Readers are put into two groups, "Fooled 'Em" and "No Foolin'"...

Da_Samon
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If they can do it with monkeys and electrodes then I don't see any reason why they won't _eventually_ be able to do it with receivers. Hell, they can detect faint radio signals from the far reaches of space.

It doesn't sound like something close to thought reading either. It sounds more like a skill that you have to teach your brain how to do. Maybe once the skill is learnt you can do away with transmitters and receivers and communicate directly via telepathy, which is maybe an intrinsic unused ability of the brain.

I remember Atari were developing something called the Mindlink Controller which you could control the game with brain impulses and muscle resistance. This was 20 years ago. Apparently it gave people headaches from concentrating too hard and it never went into mass production.

Originally posted by electric
If they can do it with monkeys and electrodes then I don't see any reason why they won't _eventually_ be able to do it with receivers. Hell, they can detect faint radio signals from the far reaches of space.

Yes, but to get around the noise issue there are 30+ mile radius "quiet zones" where no radio communication is allowed. The recievers are placed in remote areas and on Mountaintops. I'm referring to the really good ones, we all know there are radio telescopes all over the place, but you said far reaches.

Sadly this idea wouldn't work on a multi-worldwide scale, Im busy and don't exactly have time to explain but NothingMakesSense did a wonderful job explaining it.

You people give up way too easily.

An EEG is a working example that something like this could function. Who's to say I couldn't train my brain to fire at the EEG in such a way that it controlled a cursor? Steven Hawking only needs a baud rate of 3 to communicate.

I'm quite confident I can accomplish said task with a minimal apparatus consisting of the following:

- Conductive Gel for head electrodes.
- Two electrodes at either side of the head.
- Tin foil hat for shielding.
- The ADC on my TV-Card which can do ~496khz sampling.
- Program to display raw ADC data as a bitmap in realtime from the ADC.
- RF amplifier between electrodes and ADC.

If I can change parts of the bitmap drawn onscreen by thoughts, this should be proof that it can be done.

I can't tell if this is due to skin resistance or it's actually getting some signals from the brain, but I can say that the amplitudes of some signals are capable of changing very predictably with different thoughts. It mostly drops off if I close my eyes, for instance.

Even if it was operating similar to a polygraph, there's nothing to say I couldn't teach myself how to control it and thus use it as an input device.

I see no reason why thought recognition should be impossible... the only real obstacle is demodulating brain emanations in such a manner that they can be interpreted by a computer.

Unless we find some sort of direct analog between brain-waves and data that can be understood by a computer, we'll have to fall back on the cruder method of simply wiring circuitry to recognize raw thought waves of specific patterns (such as those produced with a forcible thought of "on" or "off", for instance), to control simple things like lights, television sets, and the baser functions of computers. The limitations of this second method would be great, however... given the diversity of thought of which we are capable, enormous amounts of data would be required for something like a communications program.