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might be able to rapidly transmit words found in a common conversation. This means that one would think of the words in entire sentences and paragraphs of a conversation and a computer would print them out. This could be extremely useful for journalists, writers, novelists, and poets, who could simply think and have a computer take dictation. The computer would also become a mental secretary. You would mentally give instructions to the robo-secretary about a dinner, plane trip, or vacation, and it would fill in all the details about the reservations.
Not only dictation but also music may one day be transcribed in this way. Musicians would simply hum a few melodies in their head and a computer would print them out, in musical notation. To do this, you would ask someone to mentally hum a series of notes, which would generate certain electrical signals for each one. A dictionary would again be created in this way, so that when you think of a musical note, the computer would print it out in musical notation. In science fiction, telepaths often communicate across language barriers, since thoughts are considered to be universal. However, this might not be true. Emotions and feelings may well be nonverbal and universal, so that one could telepathically send them to anyone, but rational thinking is so closely tied to language that it is very unlikely that complex thoughts could be sent across language barriers. Words will still be sent telepathically in their original language. TELEPATHY HELMETS
TELEPATHY HELMETS In science fiction, we also often encounter telepathy helmets. Put them on, and—presto!—you can read other people’s minds. The U.S. Army, in fact, has expressed interest in this technology. In a firefight, with explosions going off and bullets whizzing overhead, a telepathy helmet could be a lifesaver, since it can be difficult to communicate orders amid the sound and fury of the battlefield. (I can personally testify to this. Years ago, during the Vietnam War, I served in the U.S. Infantry at Fort Benning, outside Atlanta, Georgia. During machine-gun training, the sound of hand grenades and rounds of bullets going off on the battlefield next to my ear was deafening; it was so intense I could not hear anything else. Later, there was a loud ringing in my ear that lasted for three full days.) With a telepathy helmet, a soldier could mentally communicate with his platoon amid all the thunder and noise.
Recently, the army gave a $6.3 million grant to Dr. Gerwin Schalk at Albany Medical College, but it knows that a fully functional telepathy helmet is still years away. Dr. Schalk experiments with ECOG technology, which, as we have seen, requires placing a mesh of electrodes directly on top of the exposed brain. With this method, his computers have been able to recognize vowels and thirty-six individual words inside the thinking brain. In some of his experiments, he approached 100 percent accuracy. But at present, this is still impractical for the U.S. Army, since it requires removing part of the skull in the clean, sterile environment of a hospital. And even then, recognizing vowels and a handful of words is a far cry from sending urgent messages to headquarters in a firefight. But his ECOG experiments have demonstrated that it is possible to communicate mentally on the battlefield.
Another method is being explored by Dr. David Poeppel of New York University. Instead of opening up the skulls of his subjects, he employs MEG technology, using tiny bursts of magnetic energy rather than electrodes to create electrical charges in the brain. Besides being noninvasive, the advantage of MEG technology is that it can precisely measure fleeting neural activity, in contrast to the slower MRI scans. In his experiments, Poeppel has been able to successfully record electrical activity in the auditory cortex when people think silently of a certain word. But the drawback is that this recording still requires the use of large, table-size machines to generate a magnetic pulse. Obviously, one wants a method that is noninvasive, portable, and accurate. Dr. Poeppel hopes his work with MEG technology will complement the work being done using EEG sensors. But true telepathy helmets are still many years away, because MEG and EEG scans lack accuracy. MRI IN A CELL PHONE
MRI IN A CELL PHONE At present, we are hindered by the relatively crude nature of the existing instruments. But, as time goes by, more and more sophisticated instruments will probe deeper into the mind. The next big breakthrough may be MRI machines that are handheld.
The reason why MRI machines have to be so huge right now is that one needs a uniform magnetic field to get good resolution. The larger the magnet, the more uniform one can make the field, and the better accuracy one finds in the final pictures. However, physicists know the exact mathematical properties of magnetic fields (they were worked out by physicist James Clerk Maxwell back in the 1860S). In 1993 in Germany, Dr. Bernhard Bliimich and his colleagues created the world’s smallest MRI machine, which is the size of a briefcase. It uses a weak and distorted magnetic field, but supercomputers can analyze the magnetic field and correct for this so that the device produces realistic 3- D pictures. Since computer power doubles roughly every two years, they are now powerful enough to analyze the magnetic field created by the briefcase-sized device and compensate for its distortion.
As a demonstration of their machine, in 2006 Dr. Bliimich and his colleagues were able to take MRI scans of Otzi, the “Iceman,” who was frozen in ice about 5,300 years ago toward the end of the last ice age. Because Otzi was frozen in an awkward position, with his arms spread apart, it was difficult to cram him inside the small cylinder of a conventional MRI machine, but Dr. Bliimich’s portable machine easily took MRI photographs. These physicists estimate that, with increasing computer power, an MRI machine of the future might be the size of a cell phone. The raw data from this cell phone would be sent wirelessly to a supercomputer, which would process the data from the weak magnetic field and then create a 3-D image. (The weakness of the magnetic field is compensated for by the increase in computer power.) This then could vastly accelerate research. “Perhaps something like the Star Trek tricorder is not so far off
after all,” Dr. Bliimich has said. (The tricorder is a small, handheld scanning device that gives an instant diagnosis of any illness.) In the future, you may have more computer power in your medicine cabinet than there is in a modern university hospital today. Instead of waiting to get permission from a hospital or university to use an expensive MRI machine, you could gather data in your own living room by simply waving the portable MRI over yourself and then e-mailing the results to a lab for analysis.
a lab for analysis. It could also mean that, at some point in the future, an MRI telepathy helmet might be possible, with vastly better resolution than an EEG scan. Here is how it may work in the coming decades. Inside the helmet, there would be electromagnetic coils to produce a weak magnetic field and radio pulses that probe the brain. The raw MRI signals would then be sent to a pocketsize computer placed in your belt. The information would then be radioed to a server located far from the battlefield. The final processing of the data would be done by a supercomputer in a distant city. Then the message would be radioed back to your troops on the battlefield. The troops would hear the message either through speakers or through electrodes placed in the auditory cortex of their brains. DARPA AND HUMAN ENHANCEMENT
DARPA AND HUMAN ENHANCEMENT Given the costs of all this research, it is legitimate to ask: Who is paying for it? Private companies have only recently shown interest in this cutting-edge technology, but it’s still a big gamble for many of them to fund research that may never pay off. Instead, one of the main backers is DARPA, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has spearheaded some of the most important technologies of the twentieth century. DARPA was originally set up by President Dwight Eisenhower after the Russians sent Sputnik into orbit in 1957 and shocked the world. Realizing that the United States might quickly be outpaced by the Soviets in high technology, Eisenhower hastily established this agency to keep the country competitive with the Russians. Over the years, the numerous projects it started grew so large that they became independent entities by themselves. One of its first spinoffs was NASA.
DARPA’s strategic plan reads like something from science fiction: its “only charter is radical innovation.” The only justification for its existence is “to accelerate the future into being.” DARPA scientists are constantly pushing the boundaries of what is physically possible. As former DARPA official Michael Goldblatt says, they try not to violate the laws of physics, “or at least not knowingly. Or at least not more than one per program.”
per program.” But what separates DARPA from science fiction is its track record, which is truly astounding. One of its early projects in the 1960s was Arpanet, which was a war-fighting telecommunications network that would electronically connect scientists and officials during and after World War III. In 1989, the National Science Foundation decided that, in light of the breakup of the Soviet bloc, it was unnecessary to keep it a secret, so it declassified this hush-hush military technology and essentially gave codes and blueprints away for free. Arpanet would eventually become the Internet. When the U.S. Air Force needed a way to guide its ballistic missiles in space, DARPA helped create Project 57, a top-secret project that was designed to place H-bombs on hardened Soviet missile silos in a thermonuclear exchange. It would later become the foundation for the Global Positioning System (GPS). Instead of guiding missiles, today it guides lost motorists.
DARPA has been a key player in a series of inventions that have altered the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including cell phones, night-vision goggles, telecommunications advances, and weather satellites. I have had a chance to interact with DARPA scientists and officials on several occasions. I once had lunch with one of the agency’s former directors at a reception filled with many scientists and futurists. I asked him a question that had always bothered me: Why do we have to rely on dogs to sniff our luggage for the presence of high explosives? Surely our sensors are sensitive enough to pick up the telltale signature of explosive chemicals. He replied that DARPA had actively looked into this same question but had come up against some severe technical problems. The olfactory sensors of dogs, he said, had evolved over millions of years to be able to detect a handful of molecules, and that kind of sensitivity is extremely difficult to match, even with our most
kind of sensitivity is extremely difficult to match, even with our most finely tuned sensors. It’s likely that we will continue to rely on dogs at airports for the foreseeable future.
On another occasion, a group of DARPA physicists and engineers came to a talk I gave about the future of technology. Later I asked them if they had any concerns of their own. One concern, they said, was their public image. Most people have never heard of DARPA, but some link it to dark, nefarious government conspiracies, everything from UFO cover- ups, Area 51, and Roswell to weather control, etc. They sighed. If only these rumors were true, they could certainly use help from alien technology to jump-start their research!
With a budget of $3 billion, DARPA has now set its sights on the brain-machine interface. When discussing the potential applications, former DARPA official Michael Goldblatt pushes the boundary of the imagination. He says, “Imagine if soldiers could communicate by thought alone.... Imagine the threat of biological attack being inconsequential. And contemplate, for a moment, a world in which learning is as easy as eating, and the replacement of damaged body parts as convenient as a fast-food drive-through. As impossible as these visions sound or as difficult as you might think the task would be, these visions are the everyday work of the Defense Sciences Office [a branch of DARPA].”
Goldblatt believes that historians will conclude that the long-term legacy of DARPA will be human enhancement, “our future historical strength.” He notes that the famous army slogan “Be All You Can Be” takes on a new meaning when contemplating the implications of human enhancement. Perhaps it is no accident that Michael Goldblatt is pushing human enhancement so vigorously at DARPA. His own daughter suffers from cerebral palsy and has been confined to a wheelchair all her life. Since she requires outside help, her illness has slowed her down, but she has always risen above adversity. She is going to college and dreaming of starting her own company. Goldblatt acknowledges that his daughter is his inspiration. As Washington Post editor Joel Garreau has noted, “What he is doing is spending untold millions of dollars to create what might well be the next step in human evolution. And yet, it has occurred to him that the technology he is helping create might someday allow his
to him that the technology he is helping create might someday allow his daughter not just to walk, but to transcend.”
PRIVACY ISSUES When hearing of mind-reading machines for the first time, the average person might be concerned about privacy. The idea that a machine concealed somewhere may be reading our intimate thoughts without our permission is unnerving. Human consciousness, as we have stressed, involves constantly running simulations of the future. In order for these simulations to be accurate, we sometimes imagine scenarios that wade into immoral or illegal territory, but whether or not we act on these plans, we prefer to keep them private. For scientists, life would be easier if they could simply read people’s thoughts from a distance using portable devices (rather than by using clumsy helmets or surgically opening up the skull), but the laws of physics make this exceedingly difficult.
When I asked Dr. Nishimoto, who works in Dr. Gallant’s Berkeley lab, about the question of privacy, he smiled and replied that radio signals degrade quite rapidly outside the brain, so these signals would be too diffuse and weak to make any sense to anyone standing more than a few feet away. (In school, we learned about Newton’s laws and that gravity diminishes as the square of the distance, so that if you doubled your distance from a star, the gravity field diminishes by a factor of four. But magnetic fields diminish much faster than the square of the distance. Most signals decrease by the cube or quartic of the distance, so if you double the distance from an MRI machine, the magnetic field goes down by a factor of eight or more.)
Furthermore, there would be interference from the outside world, which would mask the faint signals coming from the brain. This is one reason why scientists require strict laboratory conditions to do their work, and even then they are able to extract only a few letters, words, or images from the thinking brain at any given time. The technology is not adequate to record the avalanche of thoughts that often circulate in our brain as we simultaneously consider several letters, words, phrases, or sensory information, so using these devices for mind reading as seen in the movies is not possible today, and won’t be for decades to come.
For the foreseeable future, brain scans will continue to require direct access to the human brain in laboratory conditions. But in the highly unlikely event that someone in the future finds a way to read thoughts from a distance, there are still countermeasures you can take. To keep your most important thoughts private, you might use a shield to block brain waves from entering the wrong hands. This can be done with something called a Faraday cage, invented by the great British physicist Michael Faraday in 1836, although the effect was first observed by Benjamin Franklin. Basically, electricity will rapidly disperse around a
metal cage, such that the electric field inside the cage is zero. To demonstrate this, physicists (like myself) have entered a metallic cage on which huge electrical bolts are fired. Miraculously, we are unscratched. This is why airplanes can be hit by lightning bolts and not suffer damage, and why cable wires are covered with metallic threads. Similarly, a telepathy shield would consist of thin metal foil placed around the brain. TELEPATHY VIA NANOPROBES IN THE BRAIN
TELEPATHY VIA NANOPROBES IN THE BRAIN There is another way to partially solve the privacy issue, as well as the difficulty of placing ECOG sensors into the brain. In the future, it may be possible to exploit nanotechnology, the ability to manipulate individual atoms, to insert a web of nanoprobes into the brain that can tap into your thoughts. These nanoprobes might be made of carbon nanotubes, which conduct electricity and are as thin as the laws of atomic physics allow. These nanotubes are made of individual carbon atoms arrayed in a tube a few molecules thick. (They are the subject of intense scientific interest, and are expected in the coming decades to revolutionize the way scientists probe the brain.)
The nanoprobes would be placed precisely in those areas of the brain devoted to certain activities. In order to convey speech and language, they would be placed in the left temporal lobes. In order to process visual images, they would be placed in the thalamus and visual cortex. Emotions would be sent via nanoprobes in the amygdala and limbic system. The signals from these nanoprobes would be sent to a small computer, which would process the signals and wirelessly send information to a server and then the Internet. Privacy issues would be partially solved, since you would completely control when your thoughts are being sent over cables or the Internet. Radio signals can be detected by any bystander with a receiver, but electrical signals sent along a cable cannot. The problem of opening up the skull to use messy ECOG meshes is also solved, because the nanoprobes can be inserted via microsurgery.
Some science-fiction writers have conjectured that when babies are born in the future, these nanoprobes might be painlessly implanted, so that telepathy becomes a way of life for them. In Star Trek, for example, implants are routinely placed into the children of the Borg at birth so that they can telepathically communicate with others. These children cannot imagine a world where telepathy does not exist. They take it for granted that telepathy is the norm. Because these nanoprobes are tiny, they would be invisible to the outside world, so there would be no social ostracism. Although society might be repulsed at the idea of inserting probes permanently into the brain, these science-fiction writers assume that people will get used to the idea because the nanoprobes would be so useful, just like test-tube babies have been accepted by society today after the initial controversy surrounding them. LEGAL ISSUES
LEGAL ISSUES For the foreseeable future, the question is not whether someone will be able to read our thoughts secretly from a remote, concealed device, but whether we will willingly allow our thoughts to be recorded. What happens, then, if some unscrupulous person gets unauthorized access to those files? This raises the issue of ethics, since we would not want our thoughts to be read against our will. Dr. Brian Pasley says, “There are ethical concerns, not with the current research, but with the possible extensions of it. There has to be a balance. If we are somehow able to decode someone’s thoughts instantaneously that might have great benefits for the thousands of severely disabled people who are unable to communicate right now. On the other hand, there are great concerns if this were applied to people who didn’t want that.”
Once it becomes possible to read people’s minds and make recordings, a host of other ethical and legal questions will arise. This happens whenever any new technology is introduced. Historically it often takes years before the law is fully able to address their implications. For instance, copyright laws may have to be rewritten. What happens if someone steals your invention by reading your thoughts? Can you patent your thoughts? Who actually owns the idea? Another problem occurs if the government is involved. As John Perry Barlow, poet and lyricist for the Grateful Dead, once said, “Relying on
the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.” Would the police be allowed to read your thoughts when you are being interrogated? Already courts have been ruling on cases where an alleged criminal refused to submit his DNA as evidence. In the future, will the government be allowed to read your thoughts without your consent, and if so, will they be admissible in court? How reliable would they be? In the same way that MRI lie detectors measure only increased brain activity, it’s important to note that thinking about a crime and actually committing one are two different things. During cross-examination, a defense lawyer might argue that these thoughts were just random musings and nothing more.
Another gray area concerns the rights of people who are paralyzed. If they are drafting a will or legal document, can a brain scan be sufficient to create a legal document? Assume that a totally paralyzed person has a sharp, active mind and wants to sign a contract or manage his funds. Are these documents legal, given that the technology may not be perfect? There is no law of physics that can resolve these ethical questions. Ultimately, as this technology matures, these issues will have to be settled in court by judges and juries.
settled in court by judges and juries. Meanwhile, governments and corporations might have to invent new ways to prevent mental espionage. Industrial espionage is already a multimillion-dollar industry, with governments and corporations building expensive “safe rooms” that have been scanned for bugs and listening devices. In the future (assuming that a method can be devised to listen to brain waves from a distance), safe rooms may have to be designed so that brain signals are not accidentally leaked to the outside world. These safe rooms would be surrounded by metallic walls, which would form a Faraday cage shielding the interior of the room from the outside world.
Every time a new form of radiation has been exploited, spies have tried to use it for espionage, and brain waves are probably no exception. The most famous case involved a tiny microwave device hidden in the Great Seal of the United States in the U.S. embassy in Moscow. From 1945 until 1952, it was transmitting top-secret messages from U.S. diplomats directly to the Soviets. Even during the Berlin Crisis of 1948 and the Korean War, the Soviets used this bug to decipher what the United States was planning. It might have continued to leak secrets even
today, changing the course of the Cold War and world history, but it was accidentally discovered when a British engineer heard secret conversations on an open radio band. U.S. engineers were shocked when they picked apart the bug; they failed to detect it for years because it was passive, requiring no energy source. (The Soviets cleverly evaded detection because the bug was energized by microwave beams from a remote source.) It is possible that future espionage devices will be made to intercept brain waves as well. Although much of this technology is still primitive, telepathy is slowly becoming a fact of life. In the future, we may interact with the world via the mind. But scientists want to go beyond just reading the mind, which is passive. They want to take an active role—to move objects with the mind. Telekinesis is a power usually ascribed to the gods. It is the divine power to shape reality to your wishes. It is the ultimate expression of our thoughts and desires.
We will soon have it. It is the business of the future to be dangerous.... The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur. —ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD 4 TELEKINESIS MIND CONTROLLING MATTER Cathy Hutchinson is trapped inside her body. She was paralyzed fourteen years ago by a massive stroke. A quadriplegic, she is like thousands of “locked-in” patients who have lost control over most of their muscles and bodily functions. Most of the day, she lies helpless, requiring continual nursing care, yet her mind is clear. She is a prisoner in her own body.
But in May 2012, her fortunes changed radically. Scientists at Brown University placed a tiny chip on top of her brain, called Braingate, which is connected by wires to a computer. Signals from her brain are relayed through the computer to a mechanical robotic arm. By simply thinking, she gradually learns to control the motion of the arm so that it can, for instance, grab a bottled drink and bring it to her mouth. For the first time, she is able to have some control of the world around her.
Because she is paralyzed and cannot talk, she had to communicate her excitement by making eye movements. A device tracks her eyes and then translates her movements into a typed message. When she was asked how she felt, after years of being imprisoned inside a shell called her body, she replied, “Ecstatic!” Looking forward to the day when her other limbs are connected to her brain via computer, she added, “I would love to have a robotic leg support.” Before her stroke, she loved to cook and tend her garden. “I know that someday this will happen again,” she added. At the rate at which the field of cyber prosthetics is moving, she might have her wish soon.
Professor John Donoghue and his colleagues at Brown University and also at the University of Utah have created a tiny sensor that acts like a bridge to the outside world for those who can no longer communicate. When I interviewed him, he told me, “We have taken a tiny sensor, the size of a baby aspirin, or four millimeters, and implanted it onto the surface of the brain. Because of ninety-six little ‘hairs’ or electrodes that pick up brain impulses, it can pick up signals of your intention to move your arm. We target the arm because of its importance.” Because the motor cortex has been carefully mapped over the decades, it is possible to place the chip directly on top of the neurons that control specific limbs.
The key to Braingate lies in translating neural signals from the chip into meaningful commands that can move objects in the real world, starting with the cursor of a computer screen. Donoghue told me that he does this by asking the patient to imagine moving the cursor of a computer screen in a certain way, e.g., moving it to the right. It takes only a few minutes to record the brain signals corresponding to this task. In this way, the computer recognizes that whenever it detects a brain signal like that, it should move the cursor to the right. Then, whenever that person thinks of moving the cursor to the right, the computer actually moves the cursor in that direction. In this way, there is a one-to-one map between certain actions that the patient imagines and the actual action itself. A patient can immediately start to control the movement of the cursor, practically on the first try.
Braingate opens the door to a new world of neuroprosthetics, allowing a paralyzed person to move artificial limbs with the mind. In addition, it lets the patient communicate directly with their loved ones. The first version of this chip, tested in 2004, was designed so that paralyzed patients could communicate with a laptop computer. Soon afterward, these patients were surfing the web, reading and writing e-mails, and controlling their wheelchairs. More recently, the cosmologist Stephen Hawking had a neuroprosthetic device attached to his glasses. Like an EEG sensor, it can connect his thoughts to a computer so that he can maintain some contact with the outside world. It is rather primitive, but eventually devices similar to it will become much more sophisticated, with more channels and greater sensitivity.
All this, Dr. Donoghue told me, could have a profound impact on the lives of these patients: “Another useful thing is that you can connect this computer to any device—a toaster, a coffee maker, an air conditioner, a light switch, a typewriter. It’s really quite easy to do these things these days, and it’s very inexpensive. For a quadriplegic who can’t get around, they will be able to change the TV channel, turn the lights on, and do all those things without anybody coming into the room and doing it for them.” Eventually, they will be able to do anything a normal person can do, via computers. FIXING SPINAL CORD INJURIES A number of other groups are entering the fray. Another breakthrough was made by scientists at Northwestern University who have connected
a monkey’s brain directly to his own arm, bypassing an injured spinal cord. In 1995, there was the sad story of Christopher Reeve, who soared into outer space in the Superman movies but was completely paralyzed due to an injury to his spinal cord. Unfortunately, he was thrown off a horse and landed on his neck, so the spinal cord was damaged just beneath his head. If he had lived longer, he might have seen the work of scientists who want to use computers to replace broken spinal cords. In the United States alone, more than two hundred thousand people have some form of spinal cord injury. In an earlier age, these individuals might have died soon after the accident, but because of advances in acute trauma care, the number of people who survive these sorts of injuries has actually grown in recent years. We are also haunted by the images of thousands of wounded warriors who were victims of roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. And if you include the number of
bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. And if you include the number of patients paralyzed by strokes and other illnesses, like amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the number of patients swells to two million.
The scientists at Northwestern used a one-hundred-electrode chip, which was placed directly on the brain of a monkey. The signals from the brain were carefully recorded as the monkey grasped a ball, lifted it, and released it into a tube. Since each task corresponds to a specific firing of neurons, the scientists could gradually decode these signals. When the monkey wanted to move his arm, the signals were processed by a computer using this code, and, instead of sending the messages to a mechanical arm, they sent the signals directly to the nerves of the monkey’s real arm. “We are eavesdropping on the natural electrical signals from the brain that tell the arm and hand how to move, and sending those signals directly to the muscles,” says Dr. Lee Miller. By trial and error, the monkey learned to coordinate the muscles in his arm. “There is a process of motor learning that is very similar to the
process you go through when you learn to use a new computer, mouse, or a different tennis racquet,” adds Dr. Miller. (It is remarkable that the monkey was able to master so many motions of his arm, given the fact that there are only one hundred electrodes on this brain chip. Dr. Miller points out that millions of neurons are involved in controlling the arm. The reason that one hundred electrodes can give a reasonable approximation to the output of millions of neurons is that the chip connects to the output neurons, after all the complex processing has already been done by the brain. With the sophisticated analysis out of the way, the one hundred electrodes are responsible simply for feeding that information to the arm.) This device is one of several being devised at Northwestern that will
This device is one of several being devised at Northwestern that will allow patients to bypass their injured spinal cords. Another neural prosthesis uses the motion of the shoulders to control the arm. An upward shrug causes the hand to close. A downward shrug causes the hand to open. The patient also has the ability to curl his fingers around an object like a cup, or manipulate a key that is grasped between the thumb and index finger. Dr. Miller concludes, “This connection from brain to muscles might someday be used to help patients paralyzed due to spinal cord injury perform activities of daily living and achieve greater independence.” REVOLUTIONIZING PROSTHETICS
REVOLUTIONIZING PROSTHETICS Much of the funding driving these remarkable developments comes from a DARPA project called Revolutionizing Prosthetics, a $150 million effort that has been bankrolling these efforts since 2006. One of the driving forces behind Revolutionizing Prosthetics is retired U.S. Army colonel Geoffrey Ling, who is a neurologist with several tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was appalled at the human carnage he witnessed on the battlefield caused by roadside bombs. In previous wars, many of these brave service members would have died on the spot. But today, with helicopters and an extensive medical evacuation infrastructure, many of them survive but still suffer from serious bodily injuries. More than 1,300 service members have lost limbs after coming back from the Middle East.
Dr. Ling asked himself whether there was a scientific way to replace these lost limbs. Backed by funding from the Pentagon, he asked his staff to come up with concrete solutions within five years. When he made that request, he was met with incredulity. He recalled, “They thought we were crazy. But it’s in insanity that things happen.” Spurred into action by Dr. Ling’s boundless enthusiasm, his crew has created miracles in the laboratory. For example, Revolutionary Prosthetics funded scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory who have created the most advanced mechanical arm on Earth, which can duplicate nearly all the delicate motions of the fingers, hand, and arm in three dimensions. It is the same size and has the same strength and agility as a real arm. Although it is made of steel, if you covered it up with flesh-colored plastic, it would be nearly indistinguishable from a real arm.
This arm was attached to Jan Sherman, a quadriplegic who had suffered from a genetic disease that damaged the connection between her brain and her body, leaving her completely paralyzed from the neck down. At the University of Pittsburgh, electrodes were placed directly on top of her brain, which were then connected to a computer and then to a mechanical arm. Five months after surgery to attach the arm, she appeared on 60 Minutes. Before a national audience, she cheerfully used her new arm to wave, greet the host, and shake his hand. She even gave him a fist bump to show how sophisticated the arm was. Dr. Ling says, “In my dream, we will be able to take this into all sorts of patients, patients with strokes, cerebral palsy, and the elderly.” TELEKINESIS IN YOUR LIFE
TELEKINESIS IN YOUR LIFE Not only scientists but also entrepreneurs are looking at brain-machine interface (BMI). They wish to incorporate many of these dazzling inventions as a permanent part of their business plans. BMI has already penetrated the youth market, in the form of video games and toys that use EEG sensors so that you can control objects with the mind in both virtual reality and the real world. In 2009, NeuroSky marketed the first toy, Mindflex, specifically designed to use EEG sensors to move a ball through a maze. Concentrating while wearing the Mindflex EEG device increases the speed of a fan within the maze and propels a tiny ball down a pathway.
increases the speed of a fan within the maze and propels a tiny ball down a pathway. Mind-controlled video games are also blossoming. Seventeen hundred software developers are working with NeuroSky, many of them on the company’s $129 million Mindwave Mobile headset. These video games use a small, portable EEG sensor wrapped around your forehead that allows you to navigate in virtual reality, where the movements of your avatar are controlled mentally. As you maneuver your avatar on the video screen, you can fire weapons, evade enemies, rise to new levels, score points, etc., as in an ordinary video game, except that everything is hands-free. “There’s going to be a whole ecosystem of new players, and NeuroSky is very well positioned to be like the Intel of this new industry,” claims Alvaro Fernandez of SharpBrains, a market research firm.
Besides firing virtual weapons, the EEG helmet can also detect when your attention begins to flatten out. NeuroSky has been getting inquiries from companies concerned about injuries to workers who lose concentration while operating a dangerous machine or who fall asleep at the wheel. This technology could be a lifesaver, alerting the worker or driver that he is losing his focus. The EEG helmet would set off an alarm when the wearer dozes off. (In Japan, this headset is already creating a fad among partygoers. The EEG sensors look like cat ears when you put them on your head. The ears suddenly rise when your attention is focused and then flatten out when it fades. At parties, people can express romantic interest just by thinking, so you know if you are impressing someone.)
But perhaps the most novel applications of this technology are being pursued by Dr. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University. When I interviewed him, he told me that he thinks he can duplicate many of the devices found only in science fiction. SMART HANDS AND MIND MELDS Dr. Nicolelis has shown that this brain-machine interface can be done across continents. He places a monkey on a treadmill. A chip is positioned on the monkey’s brain, which is connected to the Internet. On the other side of the planet, in Kyoto, Japan, signals from the monkey are used to control a robot that can walk. By walking on the treadmill in North Carolina, the monkey controls a robot in Japan, which executes the same walking motion. Using only his brain sensors and the reward of a food pellet, Dr. Nicolelis has trained these monkeys to control a humanoid robot called CB-1 halfway around the world.
He is also tackling one of the main problems with brain-machine interface: the lack of feeling. Today’s prosthetic hands don’t have a sense of touch, and hence they feel foreign; because there’s no feedback, they might accidentally crush someone’s fingers while engaging in a handshake. Picking up an eggshell with a mechanical arm would be nearly impossible. Nicolelis hopes to circumvent this problem by having a direct brain-to- brain interface. Messages would be sent from the brain to a mechanical arm that has sensors, which would then send messages directly back to the brain, thereby bypassing the stem altogether. This brain-machine- brain interface (BMBI) could enable a clean, direct feedback mechanism to allow for the sensation of touch.
Dr. Nicolelis started by connecting the motor cortex of rhesus monkeys to mechanical arms. These mechanical arms have sensors on them, which then send signals back to the brain by electrodes connected to the somatosensory cortex (which registers the sensation of touch). The monkeys were given a reward after every successful trial; they learned how to use this apparatus within four to nine trials. To do this, Dr. Nicolelis had to invent a new code that would represent different surfaces (which were rough or smooth). “After a month of practice,” he told me, “this part of the brain learns this new code, and starts to associate this new artificial code that we created with different textures. So this is the first demonstration that we can create a sensory channel” that can simulate sensations of the skin.
I mentioned to him that this idea sounds like the “holodeck” of Star Trek, where you wander in a virtual world but feel sensations when you bump into virtual objects, just as if they were real. This is called “haptic technology,” which uses digital technology to simulate the sense of touch. Nicolelis replied, “Yes, I think this is the first demonstration that something like the holodeck will be possible in the near future.” The holodeck of the future might use a combination of two technologies. First, people in the holodeck would wear Internet contact lenses, so that they would see an entirely new virtual world everywhere they looked. The scenery in your contact lens would change instantly with the push of a button. And if you touched any object in this world, signals sent into the brain would simulate the sensation of touch, using BMBI technology. In this way, objects in the virtual world you see inside your contact lens would feel solid.
Brain-to-brain interface would make possible not only haptic technology, but also an “Internet of the mind,” or brain-net, with direct brain-to-brain contact. In 2013, Dr. Nicolelis was able to accomplish something straight out of Star Trek, a “mind meld” between two brains. He started with two groups of rats, one at Duke University, the other in Natal, Brazil. The first group learned to press a lever when seeing a red light. The second group learned to press a lever when their brains were stimulated by a signal sent via an implant. Their reward for pressing the lever was a sip of water. Then Dr. Nicolelis connected the motor cortices of the brains of both groups via a fine wire through the Internet.
When the first group of rats saw the red light, a signal was sent over the Internet to Brazil to the second group, which then pressed the lever. In seven out of ten trials, the second group of rats correctly responded to the signals sent by the first group. This was the first demonstration that signals could be transferred and also interpreted correctly between two brains. It’s still a far cry from the mind meld of science fiction, where two minds merge into one, because this is still primitive and the sample size is small, but it is a proof of principle that a brain-net might be possible. In 2013, the next important step was taken when scientists went beyond animal studies and demonstrated the first direct human brain-to- brain communication, with one human brain sending a message to another via the Internet.
brain communication, with one human brain sending a message to another via the Internet. This milestone was achieved at the University of Washington, with one scientist sending a brain signal (move your right arm) to another scientist. The first scientist wore an EEG helmet and played a video game. He fired a cannon by imagining moving his right arm, but was careful not to move it physically. The signal from the EEG helmet was sent over the Internet to another scientist, who was wearing a transcranial magnetic helmet carefully placed over the part of his brain that controlled his right arm. When the signal reached the second scientist, the helmet would send a magnetic pulse into his brain, which made his right arm move involuntarily, all by itself. Thus, by remote control, one human brain could control the movement of another.
This breakthrough opens up a number of possibilities, such as exchanging nonverbal messages via the Internet. You might one day be able to send the experience of dancing the tango, bungee jumping, or skydiving to the people on your e-mail list. Not just physical activity, but emotions and feelings as well might be sent via brain-to-brain communication.
Nicolelis envisions a day when people all over the world could participate in social networks not via keyboards, but directly through their minds. Instead of just sending e-mails, people on the brain-net would be able to telepathically exchange thoughts, emotions, and ideas in real time. Today a phone call conveys only the information of the conversation and the tone of voice, nothing more. Video conferencing is a bit better, since you can read the body language of the person on the other end. But a brain-net would be the ultimate in communications, making it possible to share the totality of mental information in a conversation, including emotions, nuances, and reservations. Minds would be able to share their most intimate thoughts and feelings. TOTAL IMMERSION ENTERTAINMENT
TOTAL IMMERSION ENTERTAINMENT Developing a brain-net may also have an impact on the multibillion- dollar entertainment industry. Back in the 1920s, the technology of tape¬ recording sound as well as light was perfected. This set off a transformation in the entertainment industry as it made the transition from silent movies to the “talkies.” This basic formula of combining sound and sight hasn’t changed much for the past century. But in the future, the entertainment industry may make the next transition, recording all five senses, including smell, taste, and touch, as well as the full range of emotions. Telepathic probes would be able to handle the full range of senses and emotions that circulate in the brain, producing a complete immersion of the audience in the story. Watching a romantic
movie or an action thriller, we would be swimming in an ocean of sensations, as if we were really there, experiencing all the rush of feelings and the emotions of the actors. We would smell the perfume of the heroine, feel the terror of the victims in a horror movie, and relish the vanquishing of the bad guys.
This immersion would involve a radical shift in how movies are made. First, actors would have to be trained to act out their roles with EEG/MRI sensors and nanoprobes recording their sensations and emotions. (This would place an added burden on the actors, who would have to act out each scene by simulating all five senses. In the same way that some actors could not make the transition from silent movies to the talkies, perhaps a new generation of actors will emerge who can act out scenes with all five senses.) Editing would require not just cutting and splicing film, but also combining tapes of the various sensations within each scene. And finally the audience, as they sit in their seats, would have all these electrical signals fed into their brains. Instead of 3-D glasses, the audience would wear brain sensors of some sort. Movie theaters would also have to be retrofitted to process this data and then send it to the people in the audience. CREATING A BRAIN-NET
CREATING A BRAIN-NET Creating a brain-net that can transmit such information would have to be done in stages. The first step would be inserting nanoprobes into important parts of the brain, such as the left temporal lobe, which governs speech, and the occipital lobe, which governs vision. Then computers would analyze these signals and decode them. This information in turn could be sent over the Internet by fiber-optic cables. More difficult would be to insert these signals back into another person’s brain, where they could be processed by the receiver. So far, progress in this area has focused only on the hippocampus, but in the future it should be possible to insert messages directly into other parts of the brain corresponding to our sense of hearing, light, touch, etc. So there is plenty of work to be done as scientists try to map the cortices of the brain involved in these senses. Once these cortices have been mapped—such as the hippocampus, which we’ll discuss in the next
chapter—it should be possible to insert words, thoughts, memories, and experiences into another brain. Dr. Nicolelis writes, “It is not inconceivable that our human progeny may indeed muster the skills, technology, and ethics needed to establish a functional brain-net, a medium through which billions of human beings consensually establish temporary direct contacts with fellow human beings through thought alone. What such a colossus of collective consciousness may look like, feel like, or do, neither I nor anyone in our present time can possibly conceive or utter.” THE BRAIN-NET AND CIVILIZATION
A brain-net may even change the course of civilization itself. Each time a new communication system has been introduced, it has irrevocably accelerated changes in society, lifting us from one era to the next. In prehistoric times, for thousands of years our ancestors were nomads wandering in small tribes, communicating with one another through body language and grunts. The coming of language allowed us for the first time to communicate symbols and complex ideas, which facilitated the rise of villages and eventually cities. Within the last few thousand years, written language has enabled us to accumulate knowledge and culture across generations, allowing for the rise of science, the arts, architecture, and huge empires. The coming of the telephone, radio, and TV extended the reach of communication across continents. The Internet now makes possible the rise of a planetary civilization that will link all the continents and peoples of the world. The next giant step might be a
the continents and peoples of the world. The next giant step might be a planetary brain-net, in which the full spectrum of senses, emotions, memories, and thoughts are exchanged on a global scale.
‘WE WILL BE PART OF THEIR OPERATING SYSTEM' When I interviewed Dr. Nicolelis, he told me that he became interested in science at an early age while growing up in his native Brazil. He remembers watching the Apollo moon shot, which captured the world’s attention. To him, it was an amazing feat. And now, he told me, his own “moon shot” is making it possible to move any object with the mind. He became interested in the brain while still in high school, where he came across a 1964 book by Isaac Asimov titled The Human Brain. But he was disappointed by the end of the book. There was no discussion about how all these structures interacted with one another to create the mind (because no one knew the answer back then). It was a life-changing moment and he realized that his own destiny might lie in trying to understand the secrets of the brain.
About ten years ago, he told me, he began to look seriously into doing research on his childhood dream. He started by taking a mouse and letting it control a mechanical device. “We placed sensors into the mouse which read the electrical signals from the brain. Then we transmitted these signals to a little robotic lever that could bring water from a fountain back to the mouse’s mouth. So the animal had to learn how to mentally move the robotic device to bring the water back. That was the first-ever demonstration that you could connect an animal to a machine so that it could operate a machine without moving its own body,” he explained to me.
Today he can analyze not just fifty but one thousand neurons in the brain of a monkey, which can reproduce various movements in different parts of the monkey’s body. Then the monkey can control various devices, such as mechanical arms, or even virtual images in cyberspace. “We even have a monkey avatar that can be controlled by the monkey’s thoughts without the monkey making any movement,” he told me. This is done by having the monkey watch a video in which he sees an avatar that represents his body. Then, by mentally commanding his body to move, the monkey makes the avatar move in the corresponding way. Nicolelis envisions a day in the very near future when we will play video games and control computers and appliances with our minds. “We will be part of their operating system. We will be immersed in them with mechanisms that are very similar to the experiments that I am describing.” EXOSKELETONS
EXOSKELETONS The next undertaking for Dr. Nicolelis is the Walk Again Project. Its goal is nothing less than a complete exoskeleton for the body controlled by the mind. At first, an exoskeleton conjures up an image of something from the Iron Man movies. Actually, it is a special suit that encases the entire body so that the arms and legs can move via motors. He calls it a “wearable robot.” (See Figure 10.) His goal, he said, is to help the paralyzed “walk by thinking.” He plans to use wireless technology, “so there’s nothing sticking out of the head. ... We are going to record twenty to thirty thousand neurons, to command a whole body robotic vest, so he can think and walk again and move and grab objects.”
move and grab objects.” Nicolelis realizes that a series of hurdles must be overcome before the exoskeleton becomes a reality. First, a new generation of microchips must be created that can be placed in the brain safely and reliably for years at a time. Second, wireless sensors must be created so the exoskeleton can roam freely. The signals from the brain would be received wirelessly by a computer the size of a cell phone that would probably be attached to your belt. Third, new advances must be made in deciphering and interpreting signals from the brain via computers. For the monkeys, a few hundred neurons were necessary to control the mechanical arms. For a human, you need, at minimum, several thousand neurons to control an arm or leg. And fourth, a power supply must be found that is portable and powerful enough to energize the entire exoskeleton. Figure 10. This is the exoskeleton that Dr. Nicolelis hopes will be controlled by the mind of a totally paralyzed person.
(illustration credit 4.1) Nicolelis’s goal is a lofty one: to have a working exoskeleton suit ready for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, where a quadriplegic Brazilian will deliver the opening kick. He told me proudly, “This is our Brazilian moon shot.” AVATARS AND SURROGATES In the movie Surrogates, Bruce Willis plays an FBI agent who is investigating mysterious murders. Scientists have created exoskeletons so perfect that they exceed human capabilities. These mechanical creatures are super strong, with perfect bodies. In fact, they are so perfect that humanity has become dependent on them. People live their entire life in pods, mentally controlling their handsome, beautiful surrogate with
wireless technology. Everywhere you go, you see busy “people” at work, except they are all perfectly shaped surrogates. Their aging masters are conveniently hidden from view. The plot takes a sharp twist, however, when Bruce Willis discovers that the person behind these murders might be linked to the same scientist who invented these surrogates in the first place. That forces him to wonder whether the surrogates are a blessing or a curse.
And in the blockbuster movie Avatar, in the year 2154 Earth has depleted most of its minerals, so a mining company has journeyed to a distant moon called Pandora in the Alpha Centauri star system in search of a rare metal, unobtanium. There are native people who inhabit this distant moon, called the Na’vi, who live in harmony with their lush environment. In order to communicate with the native people, specially trained workers are placed in pods, where they learn to mentally control the body of a genetically engineered native. Although the atmosphere is poisonous and the environment differs radically from Earth’s, avatars have no difficulty living in this alien world. This uneasy relationship, however, soon collapses when the mining company finds a rich deposit of unobtainium underneath the Na’vi’s sacred ceremonial tree. Inevitably a conflict arises between the mining company, which wants to destroy the sacred tree and strip-mine the land for its rare metal, and the
the sacred tree and strip-mine the land for its rare metal, and the natives, who worship it. It looks like a lost cause for the natives until one of the specially trained workers switches sides and leads the Na’vi to victory.
Avatars and surrogates are the stuff of science fiction today, but one day they may become an essential tool for science. The human body is frail, perhaps too delicate for the rigors of many dangerous missions, including space travel. Although science fiction is filled with the heroic exploits of brave astronauts traveling to the farthest reaches of our galaxy, the reality is much different. Radiation in deep space is so intense that our astronauts will have to be shielded or else face premature aging, radiation sickness, and even cancer. Solar flares shot from the sun can bathe a spacecraft in lethal radiation. A simple transatlantic flight from the United States to Europe exposes you to a millirem of radiation per hour, or roughly the same as a dental X-ray. But in outer space, the radiation could be many times more intense, especially in the presence of cosmic rays and solar bursts. (During
intense solar storms, NASA has actually warned astronauts in the space station to move to sections where there is more shielding against radiation.) In addition, there are many other dangers awaiting us in outer space, such as micrometeorites, the effects of prolonged weightlessness, and the problems of adjusting to different gravity fields. After just a few months in weightlessness, the body loses a large fraction of its calcium and minerals, leaving the astronauts incredibly weak, even if they exercise every day. After a year in outer space, Russian astronauts had to crawl out of their space capsules like worms. Furthermore, it is believed that some of the effects of muscle and bone loss are permanent, so that astronauts will feel the consequences of prolonged weightlessness for the rest of their lives.
The dangers of micrometeorites and intense radiation fields on the moon are so great that many scientists have proposed using a gigantic underground cave as a permanent lunar space station to protect our astronauts. These caves form naturally as lava tubes near extinct volcanoes. But the safest way of building a moon base is to have our astronauts sit in the comfort of their living rooms. This way they would be shielded from all the hazards found on the moon, yet through surrogates they would be able to perform the same tasks. This could vastly reduce the cost of manned space travel, since providing life support for human astronauts is very expensive. Perhaps when the first interplanetary ship reaches a distant planet, and an astronaut’s surrogate sets foot on this alien terrain, he or she might start with “One small step for the mind ...”
One possible problem with this approach is that it takes time for messages to go to the moon and beyond. In a little over a second, a radio message can travel from Earth to the moon, so surrogates on the moon could be easily controlled by astronauts on Earth. More difficult would be communicating with surrogates on Mars, since it can take twenty minutes or more for radio signals to reach the Red Planet. But surrogates have practical implications closer to home. In Japan, the Fukushima reactor accident in 2011 caused billions of dollars in damages. Because workers can’t enter areas with lethal levels of radiation for more than a few minutes, the final cleanup may take up to forty years. Unfortunately, robots are not sufficiently advanced to go
into these blistering radiation fields and make needed repairs. In fact, the only robots used at Fukushima are quite primitive, basically simple cameras placed on top of a computer sitting on wheels. A full-blown automaton that can think for itself (or be controlled by a remote operator) and make repairs in high-radiation fields is many decades away.
The lack of industrial robots caused an acute problem for the Soviets as well during the 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine. Workers sent directly to the accident site to put out the flames died horrible deaths due to lethal exposure to radiation. Eventually Mikhail Gorbachev ordered the air force to “sand bag” the reactor, dropping five thousand tons of borated sand and cement by helicopter. Radiation levels were so high that 250,000 workers were recruited to finally contain the accident. Each worker could spend only a few minutes inside the reactor building doing repairs. Many received the maximum lifetime allowed dose of radiation. Each one got a medal. This massive project was the largest civil engineering feat ever undertaken. It could not have been done by today’s robots.
The Honda Corporation has, in fact, built a robot that may eventually go into deadly radioactive environments, but it is not ready yet. Honda’s scientists have placed an EEG sensor on the head of a worker, which is connected to a computer that analyzes his brain waves. The computer is then connected to a radio that sends messages to the robot, called ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility). Hence, by altering his own brain waves, a worker can control ASIMO by pure thought. Unfortunately, this robot is incapable of making repairs at Fukushima right now, since it can execute only four basic motions (all of which involve moving its head and shoulders) while hundreds of motions are required to make repairs at a shattered nuclear power plant. This system is not developed enough to handle simple tasks such as turning a screwdriver or swinging a hammer.
Other groups have also explored the possibility of mentally controlled robots. At the University of Washington, Dr. Rajesh Rao has created a similar robot that is controlled by a person wearing an EEG helmet. This shiny humanoid robot is two feet tall and is called Morpheus (after a character in the movie The Matrix, as well as the Greek god of dreams). A student puts on the EEG helmet and then makes certain gestures, such
as moving a hand, which creates an EEG signal that is recorded by a computer. Eventually the computer has a library of such EEG signals, each one corresponding to a specific motion of a limb. Then the robot is programmed to move its hand whenever that EEG signal is sent to it. In this way, if you think about moving your hand, the robot Morpheus moves its hand as well. When you put on the EEG helmet for the first time, it takes about ten minutes for the computer to calibrate to your brain signals. Eventually you get the hang of making gestures with your mind that control the robot. For example, you can have it walk toward you, pick up a block from a table, walk six feet to another table, and then place the block there.
Research is also progressing rapidly in Europe. In 2012, scientists in Switzerland at the Ecole Poly technique Federate de Lausanne unveiled their latest achievement, a robot controlled telepathically by EEG sensors whose controller is located sixty miles away. The robot itself looks like the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner now found in many living rooms. But it is actually a highly sophisticated robot equipped with a camera that can navigate its way through a crowded office. A paralyzed patient can, for example, look at a computer screen, which is connected to a video camera on the robot many miles away, and see through the eyes of the robot. Then, by thinking, the patient is able to control the motion of the robot as it moves past obstacles.
In the future, one can imagine the most dangerous jobs being done by robots controlled by humans in this fashion. Dr. Nicolelis says, “We will likely be able to operate remotely controlled envoys and ambassadors, robots and airships of many shapes and sizes, sent on our behalf to explore other planets and stars in distant corners of the universe.” For example, in 2010 the world looked on in horror as 5 million barrels of crude oil spilled unabated into the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon spill was one of the largest oil disasters in history, yet engineers were largely helpless for three months. Robotic subs, which are controlled remotely, floundered for weeks trying to cap the well because they lacked the dexterity and versatility necessary for this underwater mission. If surrogate subs, which are much more sensitive in manipulating tools, had been available, they might have capped the well in the first few days of the spill, preventing billions in property damage and lawsuits.
Another possibility is that surrogate submarines might one day enter the human body and perform delicate surgery from the inside. This idea was explored in the movie Fantastic Voyage, starring Raquel Welch, in which a submarine was shrunk down to the size of a blood cell and then injected into the bloodstream of someone who had a blood clot in his brain. Shrinking atoms violates the laws of quantum physics, but one day MEMS (micro-electrical-mechanical systems) the size of cells might be able to enter a person’s bloodstream. MEMS are incredibly small machines that can easily fit on a pinpoint. MEMS employ the same etching technology used in Silicon Valley, which can put hundreds of millions of transistors on a wafer the size of your fingernail. An elaborate machine with gears, levers, pulleys, and even motors can be made smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. One day a person may be able to put on a telepathy helmet and then command a
person may be able to put on a telepathy helmet and then command a MEMS submarine using wireless technology to perform surgery inside a patient.
So MEMS technology may open up an entirely new field of medicine, based on microscopic machines entering the body. These MEMS submarines might even guide nanoprobes as they enter the brain so that they connect precisely to the neurons that are of interest. In this way, nanoprobes might be able to receive and transmit signals from the handful of neurons that are involved in specific behaviors. The hit-or- miss approach of inserting electrodes into the brain will be eliminated. THE FUTURE In the short term, all these remarkable advances taking place in laboratories around the world may alleviate the suffering of those afflicted by paralysis and other disabilities. Using the power of their minds, they will be able to communicate with loved ones, control their wheelchairs and beds, walk by mentally guiding mechanical limbs, manipulate household appliances, and lead seminormal lives.
But in the long term, these advances could have profound economic and practical implications for the world. By mid-century, it could become commonplace to interact with computers directly with the mind. Since the computer business is a multitrillion-dollar industry that can create young billionaires and corporations almost overnight, advances in the mind-computer interface will reverberate on Wall Street—and also in your living room. All the devices we use to communicate with computers (the mouse, keyboards, etc.) may eventually disappear. In the future, we may simply give mental commands and our wishes will be silently carried out by tiny chips hidden in the environment. While sitting in our offices, taking a stroll in the park, doing window-shopping, or just relaxing, our minds could be interacting with scores of hidden chips, allowing us to mentally balance our finances, arrange for theater tickets, or make a reservation.
Artists may also make good use of this technology. If they can visualize their artwork in their minds, then the image can be displayed via EEG sensors on a holographic screen in 3-D. Since the image in the mind is not as precise as the original object, the artist could then make improvements on the 3-D image and dream up the next iteration. After several cycles, the artist could print out the final image on a 3-D printer. Similarly, engineers would be able to create scale models of bridges, tunnels, and airports by simply using their imagination. They could also rapidly make changes in their blueprints through thought alone. Machine parts could fly off the computer screen and into a 3-D printer.
Some critics, however, have claimed that these telekinetic powers have one great limitation: the lack of energy. In the movies, super beings have the power to move mountains using their thoughts. In the movie X- Men: The Last Stand, the super villain Magneto had the ability to move the Golden Gate Bridge simply by pointing his fingers, but the human body can muster only about one-fifth of a horsepower on average, which is much too little power to perform the feats we see in the comic books. Therefore, all the herculean feats of telekinetic super beings appear to be pure fantasy. There is one solution to this energy problem, however. You may be able to connect your thoughts to a power source, which would then
magnify your power millions of times. In this way, you could approximate the power of a god. In one episode of Star Trek, the crew journeys to a distant planet and meets a godlike creature who claims to be Apollo, the Greek god of the sun. He can perform feats of magic that dazzle the crew. He even claims to have visited Earth eons ago, where the earthlings worshipped him. But the crew, not believing in gods, suspect a fraud. Later they figure out that this “god” just mentally controls a hidden power source, which then performs all the magic tricks. When this power source is destroyed, he becomes a mere mortal.
Similarly, in the future our minds may mentally control a power source that will then give us superpowers. For example, a construction worker might telepathically exploit a power source that energizes heavy machinery. Then a single worker might be able to build complex buildings and houses just by using the power of his mind. All the heavy lifting would be done by the power source, and the construction worker would resemble a conductor, able to orchestrate the motion of colossal cranes and powerful bulldozers through thought alone. Science is beginning to catch up to science fiction in yet another way. The Star Wars saga was supposed to take place in a time when civilizations span the entire galaxy. The peace of the galaxy, in turn, is maintained by the Jedi Knights, a highly trained cadre of warriors who use the power of the “Force” to read minds and guide their lightsabers.
However, one need not wait until we have colonized the entire galaxy to begin contemplating the Force. As we’ve seen, some aspects of the Force are possible today, such as being able to tap into the thoughts of others using ECOG electrodes or EEG helmets. But the telekinetic powers of the Jedi Knights will also become a possibility as we learn to harness a power source with our minds. The Jedi Knights, for example, can summon a light-saber simply by waving their hands, but we can already accomplish the same feat by exploiting the power of magnetism (much as the magnet in an MRI machine can hurl a hammer across a room). By mentally activating the power source, you can grab lightsabers from across the room with today’s technology. THE POWER OF A GOD
THE POWER OF A GOD Telekinesis is a power usually reserved for a deity or a superhero. In the universe of superheros appearing in blockbuster Hollywood movies, perhaps the most powerful character is Phoenix, a telekinetic woman who can move any object at will. As a member of the X-Men, she can lift heavy machinery, hold back floods, or raise jet airplanes via the power of her mind. (However, when she is finally consumed by the dark side of her power, she goes on a cosmic rampage, capable of incinerating entire solar systems and destroying stars. Her power is so great and uncontrollable that it leads to her eventual self-destruction.) But how far can science go in harnessing telekinetic powers?
But how far can science go in harnessing telekinetic powers? In the future, even with an external power source to magnify our thoughts, it is unlikely that people with telekinetic powers will be able to move basic objects like a pencil or mug of coffee on command. As we mentioned, there are only four known forces that rule the universe, and none of them can move objects unless there is an external power source. (Magnetism comes close, but magnetism can move only magnetic objects. Objects made of plastic, water, or wood can easily pass through magnetic fields.) Simple levitation, a trick found in most magicians’ shows, is beyond our scientific capability. So even with an external power supply, is it unlikely that a telekinetic person would be able to move the objects around them at will. However, there is a technology that may come close, and that involves the ability to change one object into another.
The technology is called “programmable matter,” and it has become a subject of intense research for the Intel Corporation. The idea behind programmable matter is to create objects made of tiny “catoms,” which are microscopic computer chips. Each catom can be controlled wirelessly; it can be programmed to change the electrical charge on its surface so it can bind with other catoms in different ways. By programming the electric charges one way, the catoms bind together to form, say, a cell phone. Push a button to change their programming, and the catoms rearrange themselves to re-form into another object, like a laptop.