Letting Computers Read Our Minds: What Should We Share With Them?

Emotiv's new EEG deviceYesterday, the NewScientist used the news of Adam Wilson performing the first electroencephalogram (EEG) -signaled tweet, to remind us of some other tech tools hitting the marketplace that read brain waves.

(Side note: it gives me a wry smile to think about the self-propagating effects of "Twitter news." The network effect feeding the growth of the network.)

This hit me, as it may some of you, with a "Wow!" The technology I knew about, I just had no idea it was so close to becoming a consumer packaged good.  The story highlights two companies, Emotiv and NeuroSky, that are releasing devices designed initially to function as video game devices. (I suspect that, as space technologies were once well known for spinning off into broader applications, the same will be true of video games.)

While some of the comments in the NewScientist story are hyperbolically leaping ahead to the government reading our minds, the initial thing that piqued my interest was the note that these devices can "read emotions." Emotiv sees this as a way to enhance video game avatars by animating them in coordination with the device's read of a user's emotions. My thought is that this might provide "too much information."

You see, I've become a fan of the TV drama Lie To Me, in which a detective team uncovers people's lies and emotions due to the microexpressions that all people reveal instinctually due to emotions--expressions that leak out just before we might hide them through self-control.

This is a concept I remembered from my college psychology classes, and it is something I even pick up on occasionally. But usually I don't, and usually most people don't. And, to be honest, I'd rather we keep that little bit of mystery going. Although, I suppose this would open us up to incredibly honest two-way digital conversations if we want to have them in the future.

And the "reading your mind" fears I noted above aren't completely far fetched. In fact, there are ethical discussions now underway about how neural imaging will be used in the future--far beyond video game avatars.

The most robust discussions so far have been in the life sciences field concerning the use of these techniques for medical prognosis.  But another early issue on the radar screen is the possible use of neural imaging in court cases. Could they eventually become "scientifically proven" lie detectors?

Tricky policy decisions are ahead as these devices become more and more prevalent. Here's hoping that as we tap further into the frontier of the mind, it isn't as chaotic as the wild wild West.

Is Twitter a Monopoly?

Image by Boris Veldhuijzen van ZantenLast week I read this Los Angeles Times article, and the author, David Sarno, begins by talking about a group of “Web subversives” who think that Twitter has a monopoly on a new, “full-fledged communications medium.”

"Those of us who are participating are pumping value into this closed system and trusting that Twitter will do the right thing with it," said (Leo) Laporte, referring to the tweets users pour into Twitter's databases every day by the million.

Wait. From my understanding, Twitter is an open, searchable and recordable API system. The whole conversation going on there is public (minus the very small percentage of direct messages). In fact, I assume that right now there are Twitter applications storing and analyzing every tweet that is made (certainly many applications out there could be doing this, with appropriate server space and maintenance).

By providing an open API, Twitter allowed developers to influence the brand and share in the power of the data it generates. There are plenty of Twitter users who never spend any time at twitter.com. Many argue that Twitter's growth is due precisely to its choice to relinquish control and allow others to develop robust applications for the platform.

Personally, I think there is so much buzz" about the Twitter brand that the media forgets to note that the actual powerful "medium" is SMS technology integrated with the Web. There were, and are, competitors to Twitter out in the marketplace right now. Twitter is the first widely popular platform in this arena, but it doesn't feel like a monopoly to me.  Am I wrong?

From my perspective, more power rests in the hands of mobile phone companies, because it is the delivery of SMS data (or any other type of data, really) to and from users in real time--in all locations of the planet--that is the revolutionary part of what’s going on (e.g., the way tweets began "breaking news" to the public sphere). The power of interconnected digital media, Twitter being one of the brands building this awareness, is the reason the net neutrality debate will be of growing importance in the years to come.

Not that I'm insensitive to the pressures on Twitter to monitize the service and provide a return to the investors who have poured millions into the platform. Some revuene generating tactics just launched in the last week or so--primarily sponsored aggregator applications. 

Here's where other power players--core users that drive the conversation taking place within Twitter--will come into play.  I suspect these folks, like me, will look closely at what changes occur in the next year. If Twitter appears to shut-down its focus on openness--say, by blocking a future independent application that tried to mimic a sponsored application--my guess is that some of its core users will move away from Twitter. Any technically effective open plaforms that were available would stand to become immediate, and likely powerful, competitors.