To write the brain – The daily blog of behavioral and cognitive economics

Big Tech Wants Direct Access to Our Brains

On a recent afternoon in the minimalist headquarters of the M.I.T. Media Lab, the research scientist Nataliya Kosmyna handed me a pair of thick gray eyeglasses to try on. They looked almost ordinary aside from the three silver strips on their interior, each one outfitted with an array of electrical sensors. She placed a small robotic soccer ball on the table before us and suggested that I do some “basic mental calculus.” I started running through multiples of 17 in my head. After a few seconds, the soccer ball lit up and spun around. I seemed to have made it move with the sheer force of my mind, though I had not willed it in any sense. My brain activity was connected to a foreign object. ….[READ]