Week 3

Hardware would play a very important role in BCI.  The hardware involved would have to include a mini computer small enough to fit inside the skull, and it would probably have to include some kind of sensor to make it all work.  It is hard to tell how powerful the computer would have to be.  Its function would simply be to take in information from the brain and send it wirelessly to an external computer.

The external computer would have to be powerful enough to process all the commands the brain transmits.  This would more than likely take a very fast processor and a lot of memory to keep up.  This external computer would also have to be small enough to fit in a person's pocket or purse.  None of the specifics are really known, because we do not know how much information really needs to be processed; therefore much of this blog post is conceptual.

By the time BCI becomes possible, computer technology may be advanced enough to fit both computers into one unit inside the skull.  If this is true, the single computer would probably have to be extremely powerful, but by this time it probably would not be an issue.  The one thing this computer must include, and this is very important, are PS/2 ports.  This computer would obviously not be functional without them.

Week 2

Social media and privacy/anonymity always cross paths at some point.  Someone is always trying to find out more about your personal life than you would like to provide.  With a BCI, privacy becomes less and less of an issue.  With an active, constant connection to a social network, people can easily monitor who is accessing their information; however at the same time, people can constantly "lurk" other people's profile pages without consequence.

The one thing that may end up being an issue is security.  Although it was not discussed much in class last week, security could be a big problem.  With quite literal direct access to another person's brain, who knows what could actually happen?  Privacy could end up being violated because all of that personal information is stored in the brain, and with direct access to that information, privacy becomes a great concern.

This is all speculation, of course.  No one truly knows how privacy and security will matter.  It is a common theme right now, but things may be completely different if this technology were to ever exist.

Week 1

Times are changing.  Every year, technology seems to have infinitely improved from the previous.  People are finding newer and faster ways of communicating.  We went from the telegraph, to the wired phone, to the cell phone, to the cordless phone, to text messaging, to instant messaging, to social media, and we will go further.  That is a fact.

Let's cut to the chase.  We have the means of communicating very quickly to other people, whether it be through text messaging, Facebook, etc.  This is all very convenient, but I believe we can get the message out quicker.  Currently we need to take our phones/laptops out, log in to whichever service we want to use, type out a message, and hit send.  What if we could do this nearly instantly and without the use of hands?  Brain-Computer Interface (BCI for short) is a new technology being used mostly in prosthetic limbs, but this technology could also be used to send and receive information to/from a computer.  It is really a simple concept (although a very complex system in practice); you really just need to send information directly from your brain to a computer.  The computer, as we know, can handle the rest.  If you can think it, you can do it.

This relates to last week's lecture on social networking because, well, it is social networking.  It would allow us to communicate instantly with Twitter, Facebook, SMS, etc and without the use of hands.  It's like taking an already "instant" means of communication and speeding it up even more.