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Comment by graycat | Hacker News Reader

Let's see, for such communications we already have eyes, ears, fingers, and voice with all or nearly all of these well proven from most mammals from the smallest mouse to the largest elephant with development time 65+ million years.

And with those systems given, DARPA is going to try to do better, just externally, by using sound, optics, magnetic fields, etc.?

They are NOT going to put one of their devices anywhere near MY head!

Ah, DARPA has done some good stuff -- they are allowed some big losers!

Old Advice: The first step in good research is to pick a good problem!

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If you like science fiction at all, give Accelerando a read. Of course it's just a story, but it feels like a possible real future (at least the first section). In it, there is definitely a place for people who reject integrating with technology, but that place is in the back and left behind. Instant access to all of digital knowledge, unlimited storage for every thought or experience that interests you, performing complicated calculations, visualizing higher dimensions, and so on. Your fingers, ears, and voice aren't that quick, and your eyes are limited to 2D and only have decent resolution around the center. There is certainly room for improvement over what evolved in mammals (or any animal).

It probably won't be real before I die of old age, and I'd certainly let the early adopters find the bugs, but sign me up for version 3.0 or later if I'm still around.

If I had any faith in the people implementing the software and the people funding the venture, then sure. I would love to live in the bright cheery science fiction future. But at this point I expect anyone with the money to make a proper implementation of the idea will happily and intentionally create something downright abusive and exploitative to the so-called "user". Anyone with the love to make something that would actually genuinely improve the human experience will be relegated to contributing to a half built janky implementation that has to reverse engineer the chip drivers. I would feel lucky to live in the future where you can actually own the chip in your head AND turn off thought analytics.

Yeah, I'm guilty of being pretty cynical/pessimistic from time to time too. However, despite all the nastiness and privacy invading features of the technical world, a lot of things really have just gotten better over time. Maybe just don't run "Braindows 10" or "BrainOS X" with automatic updates.

> Instant access to all of digital knowledge, ...

Yup, I agree. Indeed, that's the core goal of my startup, helping people find that stuff -- for a huge fraction of the content, tough to do now.

Sure, but as I mentioned in another response here, eyes are deep into both the design and the construction of the brain. Sooo, super tough to have a better intake channel.

To be fair to DARPA, my guess is that they have no intention of improving on eyes, ears, etc. but just augmenting them. I didn't mention it, but my reaction would be just go ahead and use just eyes and ears but give them, say, a better user interface.

> eyes are deep into both the design and the construction of the brain. Sooo, super tough to have a better intake channel.

Maybe the optical processing parts of the brain are where they'll inject a lot of the new interfaces. Have you ever had the sensation, when you're really focused on a problem and thinking hard about it, of not being able to see while you're concentrating? To me, it feels like your brain is /borrowing/ the optical lobes for other purposes at that time. I don't have any background in neurology, but it's fun to think about regardless.

> "Accelerando"

Singularity book 3 by Stross?

By Stross, yes. And it’s online: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...

Stross, yes. Not sure if it was book 3 of a series or something. I didn't read much else of his.

Not directly related to DARPA, but there are many people who have impairment in one or more of those senses. BCI technology could be transformative to the people who might not otherwise be able to access computers, even with best-in-class assistive technologies. Imagine opening a communication channel with someone who has locked-in syndrome. I just wish we could pour at least as many resources into researching humanistic technology as we do on militaristic "futures".

the idea that this stuff is going to be primarily used for disabled people is, frankly, bullshit. Maybe the grant writing process, and some of the research, but this will be commodified, indeed, things like this already are; check out the emotiv headset. There are hundreds of millions of VC dollars pouring into this right now, they aren't doing it to help locked-in syndrome, whatever they say in interviews or press releases, they intend to get returns on their investments. It drives me absolutely bonkers when I see or hear irl people using the misfortune of a tiny, tiny subset of the population to defend this. And while I appreciate the note at the end about military futures (and I agree!), the idea that there is any "humanistic" use for tech like this is ... blinkered, to put it kindly. No one needs this, at all.

Let's recontextualize that for you. Replace "this technology" with the mouse. No one needs a new way to interact with devices, information, etc indeed.

Holding such luddite views is your right, but the rest of the more transhumanist aligned population can and will leave you behind (and help less abled people along the way).

I'm for doing better than a mouse, but tough to improve on fingers, do better than HTML on a screen, but tough to do better than eyes, do better than a pair of speakers for $30 but tough to improve on ears. Augment? Maybe. Really improve as in replace? For something external? No way.

You got me there.

Sure, the research will likely at least clarify the challenges. For actually being very successful for the military purposes in the four years of the program, I'd say little to no hope.

But where you got me is even if the military goals are not achieved in the four years, maybe there will be some progress for what you mention. And even if there is no such progress, go ahead and spend the money, if only to clarify the challenges also for the non-military hope.

In effect, you have partially made my point: The DARPA program is for healthy people, say, super healthy airplane fighter pilots, each with a $100+ million office. As I noted, for them, they already have eyes, ears, .... And, I didn't mention but obvious, the mammalian visual system, and there fighter pilots are especially good, is deep into the brain and its design so that we can anticipate that nothing just external can hope to compete. Same for hearing. Much the same for speech. But, again, that holds for super healthy fighter pilots. For people without sight, hearing, etc. as you mentioned, the potential is much easier to believe in and much easier to justify whatever the chances.

I don't always laugh at DARPA: (1) They played a constructive role in making TCP/IP real, and now that it has gone commercial, with the rest of the technology of the Internet, it is one of the bigger steps up in civilization. (2) They pushed self-driving vehicles. My view is that for current traffic on current US public roads, self-driving, i.e., without a human right there, is hopeless for a very long time. BUT!!! What DARPA did might actually be good enough for 1000 army trucks charging across a road in a desert in Saudi Arabia as in Gulf War I.

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