DARPA & BIG TECH PARTNERSHIP TO HACK YOUR MIND
The former head of Facebook’s Brain Computer Research and former Director of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Regina Dugan, recently mentioned a project named “Silent Voice”, at the 2017 Building 8 conference. The article stated, “At its annual developer conference earlier this year, Dugan unveiled Building 8's mind-reading project called Silent Voice First. She explained the goal is to use optical imaging to scan a person's brain and understand the words they are silently speaking to themselves.”
Micro ECoG Brain Implants are an intermediate step to a wireless and non-invasive Brain Interface. Facebook is funding similar research to read the minds of their users. Facebook said the next step is to measure blood oxygenation in the brain with “safe and non-invasive near-infrared light”.
Former Facebook and Google Executive, Mary Lou Jepsen, thinks that a Read / Write Brain-Interface to a single neuron is possible. This literally means inserting information into the brain, as well as, extracting thoughts. She recently left “Big Tech” after 30 years of R&D with consumer optic and imaging systems (cameras and sensors) to start her own company Openwater. She comes very close to admitting that infrared mind reading technology exists in cell phones on the market today. The iPhone X is one of many modern phones that use infrared technology for environmental sensing, authentication, and 3D imagining. She says that next generation Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality use mass produced sensors. These components are made of MEMS Technology like Double Stacked Camera Chips and Ultrasound Transducers and can be used for cheap hi-tech medical imaging.
The technology replaces MRI, fMRI, and PET machines with “wearable technology”. Mary Lou says communication with thought would be possible if the scale (large fMRI machine) were reduced to something practical. She describes how these large machines coupled with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are able to decode speech, thoughts and even "imagined" images, in real time, from the brain. She explains that, 10 years ago (2008), a similar experiment was performed that had an 80% successful image recognition rate. Google is working on similar projects like Deep Dream which capture and process images with Convolutional Neural Networks in order to better classify, categorize, and detect new images.
Mind Reading with Optical Imaging is here. Infrared "imaging" of each neuron in the brain with "wearable technology" that look like a “watchman’s cap” is now being introduced to the general public. The Ted Talk with Mary Lou Jepsen provides a great visual presentation of where this technology is going. Advancing technologies will continue to blur the lines between our reality and synthetic experiences. Cell phones and modern communication networks take us another step through a gateway to a World where any experience is possible, any action manageable, and any thought, able, to be monitored.
Some additional information related to Big Tech and DARPA can be viewed in my post - THE NEXT FRONTIER OF MODERN HUMAN EVOLUTION - THE MIND