The NeuroPhone

by Patrick Appel

Researchers at Dartmouth College have created a phone that picks up on EEG signals.  Nick Carr reacts:

I've always thought that the big problem with existing realtime social networking systems, such as Facebook and Twitter, is that they require active and deliberate participation on the part of individual human nodes (or "beings") - ie, typing out messages on keypads or other input devices - which not only introduces systemic delays incompatible with true realtime communication but also entails the possibility of the subjective distortion of status updates. NeuroPhones promise, by obviating the need for conscious human agency in the processing and transmission of updates, to bring us much closer to fulfilling the true realtime ideal, opening up enormous new opportunities not only in "human behavior modeling" but also in marketing.