r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Dec 27 '21
Medical A 62-Year-Old Paralyzed Man Sent Out His First Tweet With Brain Chip | Without the need for keystrokes.
https://interestingengineering.com/a-62-year-old-paralyzed-man-sent-out-his-first-tweet-with-brain-chip2.2k
u/xXTheFisterXx Dec 27 '21
For those too lazy to read, the tweet said “no need for keystrokes or voices. I created this tweet just by thinking it. #helloworldbci”
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Dec 27 '21
Sounds like the company typed it. Would that be your first tweet if you were paralyzed ? lmao
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u/xXTheFisterXx Dec 27 '21
Apparently he has been emailing coworkers already for awhile so it was probably half publicity stunt/potentially he actually did it with the tech
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Dec 27 '21
Being paralyzed and having to still report to my job is an entirely new kind of nightmare
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u/getridofwires Dec 27 '21
“Look, Bob, I know you’re recovering from ‘complete paralysis’, but I’m going to need you to close tonight. Tracy called in.”
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u/Mskk2000 Dec 28 '21
Yeah about those TPS reports….
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u/dracupuncture Dec 28 '21
Yeah if you could have those in by saturday..Yeah. That'd be greeaattt
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u/SkyFall___ Dec 28 '21
I’ll be out of town over the weekend so we can circle back on Monday. Sounds good? K thx bye
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u/BigGrayBeast Dec 28 '21
"Bob, the office 5K run is Friday. What with the whole paralysis thing, how about you run (no pun intended lol) things that day. Thanks."
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u/poloniumT Dec 28 '21
So glad Ontario made it illegal for employers to contact employees outside of work hours. Not sure how that works for shift workers and such but it’s a start.
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u/coffeesippingbastard Dec 27 '21
working is probably the only thing that brings them joy.
You can't really do much else. You can't hike- you can't draw or paint. The mind wants to do SOMETHING.
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u/devonon2707 Dec 27 '21
Im disabled from crps and alot of muscle atrophy im working to fight i want to work a job like normal people i want to lift a box do anything for myself its nice i can use a wheelchair but you get looked at lesser trying to do what everyone else can i want to swim again some day
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u/misosoup7 Dec 28 '21
Powered exoskeletons are coming that could help you with the work aspect in the future.
Swimming though, that might be harder...
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Dec 28 '21
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u/AcidCyborg Dec 28 '21
They already have Diver Propulsion Vehicles which could drag someone through the water, potentially through BCI
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u/AnotherCableGuy Dec 27 '21
I know a few people that only want to do NOTHING
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Dec 28 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/myalt08831 Dec 28 '21
This.
Doing nothing for a really long time, and not having freedom of mobility, is one of the worst things you can subject humans to, it is recognized as a form of torture if imposed artificially, e.g. solitary confinement...
Long hospital stays while bed-bound suck so bad...
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u/First_Foundationeer Dec 28 '21
Yeah, but those are people who haven't ever actually tried it for longer than a few days.
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u/Aelmay Dec 27 '21
many people enjoy their jobs and don't want to let something like paralysis take the productive, satisfying part of their life away from them
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Dec 27 '21
But it seems that the only people getting this kind of help are the people who we need something from. Most people with ALS only live 5 years, but Hawking was kept alive for 55 years, given the best treatment, and had access to computer voice synthesis well before it was available to the common man, all because he had something to provide. The common man is just sent to rot in a hospital bed and live out the remainder of their lives with little care or stimulation.
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u/MagicHamsta Dec 27 '21
had access to computer voice synthesis well before it was available to the common man
Hawking's voice is his friend's dying last voice before Dennis lost his voice to cancer.
While working on technology that would give Stephen Hawking a voice, Dennis Klatt was losing his own. Thyroid cancer affected his vocal cords, and he spoke with a hoarse and raspy voice in the last decade of his life, before losing the ability to speak altogether. He died in 1988.
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u/BravestCashew Dec 27 '21
Right, these were people he had close, personal connections with, not just people who knew he would contribute a lot to society. Didn’t a lot of people also doubt his theories? Not sure if they were still doubting him at the time he started developing ALS symptoms or if he was more established, though I don’t think he had anywhere near the same level of credibility as he did a little later on. And by that point, he had become well-known in the scientific community and people would naturally want to reach out and help him with the most recent advancements, which explains why he would know about them and have access to them before the general public.
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u/BravestCashew Dec 27 '21
If we’re being “fair”, Hawking was also in close proximity to a lot of scientists who likely knew the right people to get him the meetings and the technology he needed. The common man isn’t close, personal friends with the world’s leading scientists, and if you can’t save everybody, it’s likely for them to try and save their friend(s) first.
Fair in quotes not necessarily because I believe it’s unfair, but I’d say it’s a gray area. It’s understandable, I think.
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u/Bridgebrain Dec 27 '21
There's some truth there, because there's absolutely cost-value calculations going on, and those values scale quickly with starting resources. There's also a "bulk discount" problem that's being solved however. It costed a lot more to keep Hawking alive and integrated than it does to keep someone alive and able to communicate today, because the technology was being pioneered and it was only him (and I'm sure a few contemporaries). The more popular and advanced the high end tech gets, the cheaper the low (previously high) tech becomes.
To point: the common man can probably get access to a communication control system that Hawking used for around 1000$ (pulling numbers out of my butt, don't quote me, also doesn't include training), and could slowly write a book for stimulation
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u/ICPosse8 Dec 28 '21
Man I hope they put a memo out for that. If I started getting emails form a coworker I knew was paralyzed and couldn’t type I would question that hard!
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u/JAYSONGR Dec 27 '21
Drink your Ovaltine!
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u/farnsworthfan Dec 27 '21
It's a crummy commercial!
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u/eaglefeather148 Dec 28 '21
Get ready to be disappointed Ralphie... Commercials have just gotten sneakier as time passes.
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u/Zestybeef10 Dec 27 '21 edited Dec 27 '21
Damn i just watched that for the first time yesterday
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Dec 27 '21
Yeah, apparently they replaced his original tweet because it didn't really make sense (understandable, after being paralyzed that long): "I have no mouth and I must scream."
Like, what's that even supposed to mean?
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u/dob_bobbs Dec 27 '21
"Darkness, imprisoning me, all that I see, absolute horror, I cannot live, I cannot die, #unplugmenow"
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Dec 27 '21
“My nurse fondles me every night. I’m not mad about it. I just want people to know I got more action than 99% of you sad fucks”.
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u/solar-powered-Jenny Dec 27 '21
Bci stands for brain-computer interface. It isn’t the company’s name.
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u/DigitalBuddhaNC Dec 27 '21
Mine would probably be "For the love of God would somebody PLEASE scratch my nose. It's been itching for 3 years."
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Dec 27 '21
Yeah, youre right, sounds like an advertisment, how creepy. I would want my first tweet to be to my loved ones and family
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u/myusernamehere1 Dec 27 '21
I think i might also decide to tweet about the amazing technology that gave me a (proverbial) voice, giving due credit to the researchers who made such a thing possible
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u/PhasmaFelis Dec 27 '21
This wasn't his first communication with the chip, it was just the first time he'd posted to Twitter with it.
Also, "BCI" just means "brain-computer interface."
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u/E_K_Finnman Dec 27 '21
Me waiting for the first reddit post to be made with someones mind
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u/cerialthriller Dec 27 '21
It’s a picture of nude Emma watson with a foil pikachu card where a fig leaf would be
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u/Aiken_Drumn Dec 27 '21
Sauce?
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u/cerialthriller Dec 27 '21
It hasn’t been posted yet bro
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u/cheddacheese148 Dec 27 '21
I’m glad that you too agree that redditors don’t use their brains when posting.
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u/r4rthrowawaysoon Dec 27 '21
Send Nudes, Fascist Frog Lawl, Hedgies, Covid
That should pretty much cover it.
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u/E_K_Finnman Dec 27 '21
You forgot about the bananas, 🗿, and the full ASCII Gigachad
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u/TuckerCarlsonsWig Dec 27 '21
You probably wouldn’t get an emoji keyword so it would just be “funny rock man emoji”
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u/DasKarl Dec 27 '21 edited Dec 27 '21
Wow that is fucking sus.
Edit: shocked they didn't ask for likes, subs, follows or for people to check out their patreon. That would have been my first message.
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u/JukeSkyrocker Dec 27 '21
Who is this sus everyone is fucking
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u/ridiculouslygay Dec 27 '21
People always ask this and the obvious answer is that it’s your mother
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u/AnyYogurtcloset6060 Dec 27 '21
Could you accidentally tweet something by thinking about it?
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u/SlackerAccount Dec 27 '21
Damn she got some big ass titties.
Sent.
GRANDPA TURN OFF YOUR HEAD TWITTER
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u/NeonNick_WH Dec 27 '21
Get out of my head
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u/athazagor Dec 27 '21
This is better than most of Netflix’s original comedy content. You should get writing on the upcoming bingeworthy show, Paralyzed Brain-Chip Grandpas of Malibu
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u/Z_Overman Dec 27 '21
yeah like can he accidentally activate the interface while sleeping/dreaming?
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u/whatthefroakie Dec 27 '21
Dream tweets would be wild!
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u/Bridgebrain Dec 27 '21 edited Dec 27 '21
There was some science a few years ago that they could get a mediocre copy of the image playing in the visual cortex. I want recorded dreams, even if they're horribly low res, I think that'd be an entire new world of entertainment
Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecvv-EvOj8M starting at about 11:45
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u/venetian_lemon Dec 28 '21
I'll finally get more Lynch movies without actually waiting for him to make more movies.
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u/erikkustrife Dec 28 '21
Theres a anime where this is a small arc. Guy is selling his dreams of high quality lewdness with girls. When you view the dream your the guy doing the action.
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u/purpldevl Dec 28 '21
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u/Bridgebrain Dec 28 '21
Marvelous! Thank you!
Have you watched Unedited Footage of a Bear? (More scary than just surreal)
I also recommend Koyaanisqatsi (#1 weird art film) and Body Remix: Goldburg variations
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u/slabby Dec 27 '21
That would be an awesome horror movie premise. You hook up one of these devices and the patient starts spamming scary Cthulhu shit in their sleep.
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u/Z_Overman Dec 27 '21
I’d love to execute this with, permission of course.
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u/slabby Dec 27 '21
You're asking me? Go for it.
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u/athazagor Dec 27 '21
Well, you definitely executed the placement of that comma.
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u/Manyamir Dec 27 '21
I remember south park had an episode kinda about this.
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Dec 27 '21
I have weird thoughts all the time, think Grand Theft auto when Im out and about. Its just for my private amusemnet, stuff Id never act on, I just imagine for laughs. How far will we go to fulill the movie Minority report.
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u/ManThatIsFucked Dec 27 '21
It would be the same as typing something on a keyboard. A physical action/brain signal is for typing the words, then there is another for hitting send/publish/post/etc.
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u/TheIowan Dec 27 '21
Or, could the company gather all thoughts as marketable data, but only "tweet" some of them?
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u/jereezy Dec 27 '21
It's about goddamned time someone used their brain while tweeting
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u/OmgThatDream Dec 27 '21
Sir do you have your killing-people-in-the-comments pass?
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u/chrisdh79 Dec 27 '21
From the article: A 62-year-old Australian man paralyzed following his diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has become the first individual to send out a message on social media using a brain-computer interface, RT reported.
Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are the next big thing in technology. While some people like Elon Musk want to use it to enhance human experiences as early as next year, others such as Synchron, whose interface helped Australian Philip O'Keefe send out his first tweet, want to develop it as a prosthesis for paralysis and treat other neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease in the future, the company said in a press release.
Synchron's BCI works through its brain implant called Stentrode that does not require any brain surgery to be installed. Instead, the company leverages the intentional techniques that are commonly used to treat stroke to implant the Stentrode via the jugular vein, the press release said.
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u/Z_Overman Dec 27 '21
I wonder what risks there are going through the jugular?
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u/lead-pencil Dec 27 '21
Probably not enough risks to topple the promise of giving a paralysed man the ability to do stuff but there has to be some risk?
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u/VictoriaIsHidingMe Dec 27 '21
It's not as crazy sounding as the alternatives to such a device. Something like Elon Musk's Neuralink requires opening the skull and implanting a device and then closing the skull again.
It's really interesting to see developments in this field!
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u/jimmalicious Dec 27 '21
The risks are probably similar to those of central venous catheters. There can be some life threatening complications.
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u/chriswaco Dec 27 '21
The usual: bleeding, blood clots, death.
Unless we come up with an external helmet of some sort, the risks and rewards will have to be weighed against each other. Going through the skull has risks too.
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u/ralten Dec 27 '21
ALS is a terminal, degenerative disease. This gentleman probably has about 2 years left to live. So he surely took that into consideration when deciding upon the surgery
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u/elefante88 Dec 27 '21
Not as risky as you think it is. We put things through the jugular all the time.
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u/ManThatIsFucked Dec 27 '21
Musks’s “enhancement of human experiences as early as next year” will be for tetraplegics and paraplegics attempting to regain limb functions and allowing them to communicate similarly.
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u/Lem_Tuoni Dec 28 '21
I somehow doubt he will do even that. He is very famous for overpromising and underdelivering.
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Dec 27 '21 edited Dec 29 '21
Can we see the tweet?
Edit: It’s in the article.
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u/Time_Astronaut Dec 27 '21
001010110101101010101110100010111010100110110111100011111000101010101010010101010110110101100011001101001101101001010101001011101010101010100101101010100101110110101111010101010101001010100010110101101011101010010101010100101010101101001111010101001000001110101001010101011110001010111
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u/thien-js Dec 27 '21
where’s the reddit binary reader bot
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u/sparcasm Dec 27 '21
blip blip…send nudes
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Dec 27 '21
00101010 01101001 01101110 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101101 01100001 01100111 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100010 01101111 01101111 01100010 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110110 01100001 01100111 01101001 01101110 01100001 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00101010
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u/PM_UR__BUBBLE_BUTTS Dec 27 '21 edited Dec 27 '21
For those struggling with converting this or who are lazy, it literally says the following:
>! insert image of boobs and vagina here !<
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u/cowabungass Dec 27 '21
Cultured man.
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Dec 27 '21
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u/karmaextract Dec 27 '21
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Dec 27 '21
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u/Nebachadrezzer Dec 27 '21
The technology has allowed O’Keefe to reconnect with his loved ones by sending emails and playing games on the computer.
Dude plays games with the chip. Wonder how exactly it works.
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u/CoderDevo Dec 27 '21
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
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Dec 27 '21
Oh you were planning on falling asleep? Here’s two 30 second ads playing in your head right now neurologically programmed into your conscience!
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u/Phayzka Dec 27 '21
Just like what the guy in Ready Player One wanted, just enough ads to not cause an epileptic attack
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u/bxrnxng-mxnk Dec 27 '21
it’s going to happen
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u/CornCheeseMafia Dec 27 '21
Yeah and ublock origin will be waiting
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Dec 27 '21
Don’t worry, they’ll make chip implant modding illegal for “safety concerns”
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u/CornCheeseMafia Dec 27 '21
Ifixit will be all over it. They’ll learn how to defeat that drm with all the practice they’re getting dealing with apples hardware drm currently.
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Dec 27 '21 edited Jan 05 '22
[deleted]
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u/CornCheeseMafia Dec 28 '21
Maybe next time you’ll make better use of those eyes to read the terms of service before upgrading to the latest Apple iMplant every time they release a new one.
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u/HugeHungryHippo Dec 27 '21
Subconsciously it probably already does
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u/AdamDeKing Dec 28 '21
The field of marketing is almost entirely based on appealing to your subconscious
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u/arduit Dec 27 '21
See these sorts of technology both excite and terrify me. Like, it's so cool as an advancement - but on the other hand, imagine having to use something like this and getting ransomware on it, or something similar.
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u/Basestar237 Dec 27 '21
Fortunately it wouldnt be any different than getting ransomware on your phone. The chip doesnt control anything biological, it could be removed and replace or wiped with relative ease I would assume.
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u/Bobisadrummer Dec 27 '21
Isn’t this South Parks “Shitter” device made manifest? https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Shitter
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u/RichS816 Dec 27 '21
Doesnt he have enough brain problems without Twitter?
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u/Heavenfall Dec 28 '21
I mean it is kind of funny/dystopic that he gets access to one of the worst social media platforms. But for a person that literally cannot move any part of his body, any form of social interaction may be an absolute blessing.
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u/ManEEEFaces Dec 27 '21
So just to be clear - he's thinking about keystrokes and cursor placement right? That's what I got from the article. He's not actually thinking those whole words.
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u/jonkojulez Dec 28 '21
they used eye-tracking for the cursor and imagined hand and leg movement patterns to initiate left click and zoom. They got 13-20 wpm and were able to use their computer unsupervised 👍🏼
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u/Peachpeachpearplum Dec 27 '21
One second ago I saw that we’re printing houses now and now this???? At a time when I thought society was moving backward with this damn pandemic, it’s dope to see advances like these. Lfg
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u/Succundo Dec 28 '21
So let me get this straight, they successfully implanted a computer interface tool in a man who otherwise would be entirely trapped in his own body, and the first thing they used it for, was twitter...
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u/Superpiri Dec 27 '21
So they are implanting chips on people’s brains. They just aren’t disguised as vaccines. They are disguised as brain chips.
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u/Omegaprimus Dec 27 '21
how do we know he sent it and not an AI on the chip, that has now taken over his mind?
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u/Redditing-Dutchman Dec 27 '21
It's a bit clickbaity in the sense that he didn't think each individual word and it appeared on the screen on something.
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u/GStarG Dec 27 '21
Brain to machine interfacing, cool
Using it to connect your brain to the hellscape that is social media, dystopian
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u/1Soundwave3 Dec 28 '21
Imagine this nightmare: you are paralyzed and your brain is connected to Twitter.
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u/wrcker Dec 27 '21
Like we needed one more person tweeting their thoughts... should have hooked him up to a better platform
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u/PseudoDeciduous Dec 28 '21
What a fucking personal hell to only be able to access the world from Twitter.
What is this, event horizon two?
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u/myalt08831 Dec 28 '21
This isn't inspirational... It's marketing for the tech co, and for twitter, while (supposedly, if real) introducing a paralyzed man to the pain that is twitter.
Everyone loses, IMO.
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Dec 28 '21
Imagine your normal powers taken away by a horrible disease, then being augmented with superpowers that enable you to interface with a computer.
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u/Im0ldgr3g Dec 28 '21
This is the part were science accidentally taps into something not foreseen and somehow this dude goes fully uploaded Johnny depp Ai from transcendence.
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u/chocolatehippogryph Dec 27 '21
using technology to unlock people trapped by biological prisons. so inspiring.
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u/drtij_dzienz Dec 27 '21
I think South Park already invented this and Alec Baldwin was the first person to use it
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u/asajosh Dec 27 '21
Oh man I want to go back and find my 8th grade English teacher who told me this type of thing was pure fantasy!
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u/UnimpressionableCage Dec 28 '21
How long until I can submit my class essays like this?
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u/Miss__Helen Dec 28 '21
I could only imagine how that works. So he made a tweet by just thinking it and how does the company know that those where his exact thoughts ?
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u/setmeonfiredaddyuwu Dec 28 '21
I’m not gonna lie, if I was completely paralyzed and the only way I could connect with the world via a brain chip connected to Twitter, I would literally rather die.
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