I recently read the article, “Now playing: a movie you control with your mind.” The title sounds like science fiction, but the article was written by MIT’s Technology Review. The article shared how we’ve evolved so far in technology that we can now utilize the activity of our own brain and have it manipulate what we’re watching.
The technology/method used: Electroencephalography or EEG, which tracks and records brain wave patterns. By tracking the brain waves movie producers, like Richard Ramchurn, can create about “101 trillion different versions of the film that you could see.”
Growing up in the 1990s I was an avid reader of the choose your own adventure books and exploring movies with our minds seems to be a similar approach. However, the obvious difference is that you don’t have just a few predetermined outcomes. Instead, with EEG movie watching you’re able to explore in ways never thought imaginable.
There are so many industries this technology can be applied to. From enhanced meditating to providing a drug free alternative in helping those with ADHD, the sky/mind is the limit. It’s not surprising that even Mark Zuckerberg is exploring how Facebook can use such tech to read minds.
With so much innovation around EEG, it seems our future posterity will see our science fiction as just research.