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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Tech Re: Gah!

Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:59 PM

Yesterday, when I wrote about the person who Twittered using nothing but the power of his mind, some commenters were quick to assume that I'd been duped:

Um, the message "sent" by this guy's brain was sent on April 1. That should tell you something.
Posted by toadmommy on April 21, 2009 at 1:21 PM

April First? REALLY, Paul??
Posted by josh bomb on April 21, 2009 at 1:39 PM

However, as commenter gloomy gus points out, it is a very real experiment. People are typing with their brains.

Seriously, guys: I'm not quite that gullible. And this twit-braining seems a little less crazy when you hear about the existence of the monkey who can move a robot arm with its brain. This video is from last year:

Seriously: We live in a world that (as Slog tipper Maria points out) has bionic penguins. Typing with our brains isn't that unbelievable is it?

Comments (11) RSS

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I type with my brain all the time.

Posted by sgiffy on April 22, 2009 at 4:06 PM

This is kinda old news. "Old" in the sense that I saw a CBS Evening News on this last year. Just instead of typing on Twitter it was Microsoft Word or something.

And, it's less cool when you actually watch how it works. I was expecting it work by having the subject just think of a sentence, making it appear on the screen. But that letter-by-letter crap (which isn't even dead on yet), is boring.

Sorry, but I grew up with the Jetson's. I expect more of science!

Posted by Shelby on April 22, 2009 at 4:19 PM

Personally, I prefer the glow-in-the-dark frogs myself.

Posted by Will in Seattle on April 22, 2009 at 4:22 PM

I typed this with my dick, does that count?

Posted by Umnumzaan on April 22, 2009 at 4:28 PM

You win this round, Constant!

Posted by josh bomb on April 22, 2009 at 4:46 PM

I tried typing without my brain once, but it just ended up sounding like Loveschild.

Posted by Mike in Olympia on April 22, 2009 at 5:04 PM

Disgusting abuse of animals.

Posted by dee on April 22, 2009 at 5:15 PM

This activity needs a better compound verb than "twit-braining."
The best I've got is "psitweeting."

Posted by krzysz on April 22, 2009 at 5:19 PM

Weirdly enough, I'm with @7 on this one. I mean, it's cool and I'm sure human beings will benefit from it -- hopefully some of those poor veterans who are coming home "some assembly required". And, given the benefits, I can't even say for sure that we shouldn't be doing stuff like this to monkeys. But Jesus fuck. They cut that poor animal's head open and stuff wires in there to make this thing work and when I watch this I can't help thinking about the animal, and how it'll probably spend the rest of its short life in misery until they euthanize it and do an autopsy to see if the wires hurt its brain at all.

Up with science and everything, but for some reason this shit gets harder to watch as I get older.

Posted by Judah on April 22, 2009 at 7:03 PM

How soon until we have terminators and ambiguously gay droids?

Posted by Urgutha Forka on April 22, 2009 at 7:10 PM