Headline Muse

The Muse Headband

They have finally done it. Someone has come up with a way to control computers using mind power. And the device is non-invasive. At least, that's what InteraXon, the company who has designed the Muse 'brain sensing' headband wish to achieve. 'It lets you control things with your mind' runs the sensational strapline for the Muse Headband promotional video. Mind control? This will sound quite sinister to many, and others will be far from convinced. After reading the authoritative but still controversial book Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku recently, I have a more open 'mind' on the matter. I don't doubt the claims InteraXon make, or at least I won't when I get to see Muse demonstrated with my own eyes. But I think 'brain sensing' is an unfortunate tag line. Could it imply that there is no brain there to sense? Are they perchance anticipating that brainless people will buy the device? To me 'brain sensing' infers that it is detecting whether there is a brain present, rather than the more spectacular functionality it can potentially offer. Perhaps InteraXon ought to revise their tag line so it more accurately represents the capability of the device. You see, Muse is actually a wearable Electroencephalograph or EEG, with 4 sensors that are positioned strategically around the Alice-band style headgear that you wear.

If you can get past the irritatingly repetitive and slightly-louder-than-it-should-be background music on the video, and ignore the embarrassing geekiness that exudes from some of the presenters (I think it's really cool!), the Muse headband does look like it has the potential to be a breakthrough technology. The last time we had a true technological breakthrough of any magnitude was 7 years ago, when Microsoft released the Xbox 360 Kinect. Kinect was truly revolutionary because it pointed up all sorts of possibilities around non-touch, voice activated, natural gesture computing, at an affordable price. The simple juxtapositioning of two cameras made all the difference. All you had to do was think creatively, and hack the system to get that Tom Cruise, Minority Report (The future can be seen!) action going. Will Muse have a similar impact to Kinect? Will it launch us into a new era of control technology? Time will tell, because at present Muse is still in an early stage of development, and InteraXon are speculating themselves on its potential to bring advances into the non-touch, thought control of devices.

At present, InteraXon are offering advance devices for a mere US$165, on the understanding that you test out the system for them. What is currently on offer goes in one direction only. The Muse Headband will be configured to measure your 'brain activity' and transfer an analysis to your laptop or iPad. The device will measure areas of your brain as they activate while you play a 'brain training game'.  The manufacturers claim that it will enable you to exercise your memory, measure your attention span and practice relaxation techniques. But is Muse more than simply a measuring device? Later, promise InteraXon, using the data they collect, there will be the possibility of using next generation Muse Headbands to control computers and other devices by mind power alone.

The future has a habit of creeping up on us from behind. And it does it quicker than we sometimes imagine it can. We once thought voice control was science fiction. Enhancing our senses was fine for vision, hearing, even speech. We have prosthetics for all of those. But we have carefully steered away from any mind enhancement. We didn't have the technology. We left that kind of thing to Star Wars, magic and folklore. Now it seems, we have the technology, and at the moment, mind control is right at the edge of our imagination of what technology can possibly offer. From motion sensing to mind sensing in just 7 short years? Who would have thought it? How soon before thought controlled computing becomes a reality for us all? And what then will we need to do (or to become), to adjust to the brave new world that will be upon us?

Images by InteraXon


Headline Muse by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Zip it, Block it, Flag it

80% of children in the UK have encountered unsuitable or harmful content on the Internet (Byron, 2009 - see report link below) and it has usually been down to parents to educate their children about keeping safe on the web - that is until now.

'Zip it, Block it, Flag it' is the tag line for a new campaign introduced by the UK government, which will show primary school children (ages 5-11) how to avoid nasty content and risky conversations on social networking sites. Zip it - keep your personal stuff private and think about what you say and do online. Block it - Block people who send nasty messages and don't open unknown links and attachments. Flag it - Flag up with someone you trust if anything upsets you or if someone asks to meet you offline. The campaign is being supported by all the major players, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Myspace. CEOP - the UK Government's child protection agency who are also involved, recently criticised the social networking services for what it perceived as their lack of action over cyberbullying and other forms of internet risk. They may be slightly uncomfortable partners.

Although e-safety will not be delivered in formal online safety classes, the key messages will be integrated into all other subjects across the curriculum. This means that primary school teachers will now have to become more expert in their knowledge of social networking, instant messaging and other new technologies and will need to be a little more savvy about how kids use them. Whether teachers will have the time or the space to squeeze more content into an already overburdened National Curriculum remains to be seen. We shall see whether this campaign is a success over the long term, or whether it goes to the wall like so many other UK Government schemes, but on the surface, this approach should be welcomed by parents and teachers alike. It's just a pity it wasn't introduced sooner.

Related Articles

Online safety push for 5 year-olds (BBC News)

Code for online safety (The Guardian)

Schools to give lessons in internet safety (PC Advisor)

Green Cross Code for the Internet (The Telegraph)

Safer Children in a Digital World (Report by Dr Tanya Byron)

Brown launches Net Code for children (The Register)

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Feeling the pinch .... again

Multi-touch screen technology is the way forward apparently. I can see just how persuasive this argument is when I look at my own iPhone and see all the possibilities. I picked up my wife's phone a few weeks back to call someone back, and forgot. Hers is not a touch screen phone, and I found myself trying to pinch gesture, in vain. How long will it be before other phones are going down the route of the iPhone?

Erik Klimczak, creative director of Clarity Consulting believes it won't be long. Second Light, the second generation of the Microsoft Surface Computing device is only a couple of years down the road, and as experience tells us, second generation devices are less buggy than the first versions, have a lot more support from manufacturers and user groups, and most importantly for the success of adoption, are a lot cheaper to buy. "Everything is moving to touch and multi-touch so you had better jump on that bandwagon," Klimczak said at a recent developers conference. It won't be long before we find out if he is correct.

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Altered Vista?

It seems that Microsoft's new Vista operating system is under fire even as it is birthed... In one of today's news articles about the new operating system BBC News reports that Microsoft is vigorously defending Vista against the criticism that it deliberately 'downgrades' the quality of audio and video. Well who'd 'a thought it....?

(Pictured Above: Bill Gates indicates the life expectancy of Vista)

Dr Peter Gutman, a lecturer at the University of Auckland, down under in New Zealand is one of the leaders of the attack. He is quoted as saying that Vista's content protection spec is "the longest suicide note in history", and claims that "The sheer obnoxiousness of Vista's content protection may end up being the biggest incentive to piracy yet created." Hmmm .... we will soon see (or maybe not).