- What if the next technology to become obsolete
is language?
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Imagine if you will a world where we don't need
to use language to communicate with each other.
Let's say I could just pluck a thought from my brain
and magically insert it into your mind.
Now you might think that world
would just be populated by a bunch of Professor X's,
which would be good news for me
because I've already got the haircut,
but what about things like science and art and fiction?
What would they look like?
Would they even exist in a world
where we communicate directly with our brains?
Now these questions are largely philosophical at the moment,
but they might not be forever because of technology.
We've talked about brain computer interfaces before
on this show, also known as BCIs.
Now this is technology that has allowed
animals and humans to control everything from
a computer cursor to a robotic arm
to an exoskeleton using some technology and their thoughts.
Oh, and this relationship goes both ways.
We can also use technology like transcranial
magnetic stimulation or ultrasonic emissions
to stimulate parts of your brain directly,
so what if we used this kind of technology
to allow people to communicate brain to brain
instead of brain to machine?
Recent experiments have shown that you can use
this sort of technology to communicate
basic information from one brain to another.
Scientists at Harvard University set up an experiment
where a human wearing an EEG cap would think
and those thoughts would be picked up by the cap,
transmitted into signals that would be sent
to an ultrasonic emitter that stimulated
a rat's brain and caused its tail to move
in a certain direction.
Meanwhile, University of Washington researchers
set up their own experiment, where two people
played a single video game in a very special way.
One person could only see the screen
and that person wore an EEG cap.
The other person only held a controller,
and they wore a transcranial magnetic coil
over their left motor cortex,
so when the person seeing the screen got a prompt
to push a button, they thought about pushing that button
really hard, and the EEG picked up those brain waves,
sent a signal that was picked up
by the transcranial magnetic coil
that stimulated the motor cortex,
and the person holding the controller
involuntarily pushed the button.
Now these experiments are cool,
particularly if you like to use animals and people
as your own sort of digital puppets,
but enough about my hobbies.
Optimists think that we might be able
to use this same sort of technology in the future
to transmit actual thoughts, or feelings,
or entire brain states, from person to person.
Now I can already sense the paranoia rising up.
Does this mean that in the future
we'll constantly be under mind reading surveillance
and mind control attacks?
The kinds of experiments we're seeing today
aren't really about mind control.
They're about sending very basic impulses
from one brain to another,
so basic in fact, that some critics argue you can't even
really call this brain to brain communication.
However, our understanding of the brain
is only going to increase from here on out,
and that technology is only going to get more sophisticated,
so what does the future hold?
Well for people who have lost the ability
to communicate verbally, it could be a real benefit.
They might not be able to speak,
but they could still communicate brain to brain,
even being able to communicate intent with their message,
and that's a big part of the future.
You see, we often have communication moments
where things are misunderstood,
even within the same language.
I'm sure you've had this happen.
You're talking to a person and they react negatively
because they took what you said the wrong way.
Well with this technology, you could transmit
not just your thoughts, but the feelings
and brain state involved, so they really understand
what you're trying to communicate,
and there's no way to miscommunicate.
And it would be amazing for education.
I mean you could read a half dozen books
on how to fly a plane, but that's not going
to give you the confidence you need to sit in
a pilot's seat and actually take off in an aircraft.
For that, you might want to schedule
a brain to brain communications session
with an actual pilot, and she gives you
what it's like to sit there at the controls
and how to control a plane in the right way,
and now you can do it yourself,
and whoa, I know Kung fu.
Sorry, spaced out there for a second.
I got a question for you guys.
How would you use brain to brain communication?
I want to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this video, make sure you hit like,
subscribe to the channel, and hey,
there are these other videos over here.
I think you know what I want you to do.
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