But seriously, I don't understand the problem they're trying to solve here. Nobody is going to learn to stimulate their muscles in new ways for an interface - an interface is supposed to make things easier. And if they're not using new stimulation patterns, or firing individual motor units, they're just moving their (arms|eyes|faces|...), which can be detected easily enough with a camera.
Not to say that the technology isn't interesting, but I think until we understand the brain much better than we do currently, the only use for BCIs is precisely the market they dismiss in the introduction - the severely disabled.
One of my dreams is to be able to move freely -- take walks! -- while editing text in my head. I'd absolutely spend hours and hours to learn to have a keyboard's functionality with, say, fingertip movements in the air. I don't know how a display would work. Of course the real dream is editing the text directly in the mind, some kind of thought-files, but I've imagined that glasses might be best as they're the least intrusive and possible in my lifetime. But even some kind of physical monitor might work: hold with one hand and write with the other.
Isn't that a pencil and notebook?
Yes, so far that's the best for walks, but I'd love to have a computer's functionality, be able to code, pull up files, copy and paste, etc., while moving, as opposed to stopping to jot something down and then moving again.
Slowly walking is just so great for thinking.
I'd even thought of a walking harness for my laptop, but it's just so absurdly awkward and even dangerous... :)
So what about a smartphone or tablet?
A great new input method might do the trick. I already use Swype on iOS despite the many (often embarrassing) mistakes I make. It's the second-best for walks after a pencil and notepad.
But a wrist sensor that let me type with little finger movements? I'd be so so so into that.
Hi. I've got something to show you. I have the same problem as what you describe, and that's the inspiration for what I've built. I can let you try it if you'll give me feedback. How can I reach out to you? My contact is my username @opdig.com.
Have you considered learning stenography? The Open Steno Project is very DIY, and I'm sure they'd be thrilled to help think up an even more mobile design for a steno writer (though AFAIK they're already very usable when walking around with a harness). When it comes to novel input methods, I really think it's a great idea far too few people know about.
It's probably junk if not vapourware; at best maybe a stepping stone towards our VR-ified future. I ordered one just to check it out.... so we'll see :)
I use a twiddler while walking. It took a couple of weeks to learn to type with one hand, but eventually it becomes less of a headache. I don't use it with any device, I just use it to write down my thoughts while I walk the dogs and get some air. When I get back home I just dump what I've written. You can easily use it for other things such as a specific cord to key off starting a voice recording, or other computational tasks.
It sounds like text-to-speech narration is honestly your best bet, for walking-and-writing. I can't imagine much that will help with walking-and-coding because of the concentration required. I'll trip on stuff even without any impediment to my vision. Just my guess!
Right, nobody is going to learn how to type on a keyboard when they could just write with a pen. /s
Interfaces are supposed to make things easier, but they are not required to improve every possible application. If this interface makes just some things easier or possible at all, it will be a win.
Using a camera would require mounting it somewhere where it can see the hand at all times, which precludes mobile uses. There's also the problem of exhausting yourself by using gestural interfaces for too long, where just minimal muscle twitches would probably be more comfortable.
Interfaces are not necessarily supposed to make things easier, they're supposed to allow the user to achieve things that they otherwise could not do (there is no easing of "can't do it") or that they otherwise had to exert decidedly more effort in attaining results than the effort of learning the interface (there is an easing, but it's tied to the cost of change/learning). If you can't meet the bar of those criteria you should always revert to the principle of least surprise.
"I am able to do X." "It is now easier for you to be able to do X." "I am unable to do X." "It is now easier for you to be unable to do X." The latter makes no sense. Moving from the impossible to the possible isn't an easing, it's a fundamental change in the nature of a thing.
Depends on your definitions, I guess. If you define "easier" as "decreases the difficulty of doing X" then it makes sense as you've reduced an infinite difficulty down to a finite difficulty.
Note you changed the nature of the problem by turning "infinite difficulty" into "finite difficulty." Subtract all the difficulty you want from "infinite" and you still end up with infinite, unless of course you subtract infinite difficulty from it... which means you qualitatively changed it from infinite difficulty to merely difficult.
Hmm, you're right about keyboards. My gut still says that learning a new interface is an unlikely thing to expect of consumers, but it'll obviously need more thought.
My issue certainly isn't with interfaces being easier for all things, I was challenging that this benefited in any substantial situation at all, but I'll concede my point until and unless I refine my argument about people being unwilling to invest effort in a new interface.
The same could have been (and was) said about the personal computer in the 70s! While this exact wristband may not replace keyboards, I think biological interfaces are definitely worth researching. All it takes is a kid creating a beautiful painting or piece of music with a new tool to start the snowball effect.
That said, the theremin was a new musical interface and didn't ever take off because it produced a strange sound quality and did not map well to preexisting human motions. Furthermore, music creation was already well understood.
Indeed, machines need to be built for the human, not the other way around. I think it's a trade off between two terms: how easy the interface is to learn and what it enables us to do. For (a contrived) example, an interface which allows humans to teleport will be learned regardless of how steep the learning curve is. Teleportation is a "zero to one" technology, it more or less competes with nothing. A new kind of keyboard on the other hand, must compete with the existing solution for keyboards, so it must be easy to learn, otherwise there would be no incentive to switch.
Learning a new interface isn't especially novel for consumers, most of the interfaces you take for granted were adopted in the last 30-40 years. The necessary tipping point is that the reward for the effort of learning a new interface must, in the preference interests of the consumer, exceed the cost of the learning effort. If it does not then you should revert to the principle of least surprise.
I disagree with this, but I'm struggling to counter it with something pithy. The problem is that there are so many ways to compare interfaces. The best I can do is point at humanity's adoption of the keyboard, which was a monumental shift. There are so many angles that you could write a book on the topic, and I'm sure plenty have been.
The keyboard predates the computer, but they're so closely connected that it's hard to pick their relationship apart. It wasn't just a happy coincidence that typewriters were laying around with the perfect input method when we invented the computer. Babbage built his computing machines without any obvious keyboard-like device (afaik), but Turing laid the foundation for general-purpose computing to crack the Enigma, a machine with a keyboard.
So during the World War II era, it was inevitable that the typed character was the future, but you'd struggle to convince people that there was a point in learning how to use a keyboard. You don't need a typewriter to writer a letter to someone, and besides, it's so much more ugly and impersonal than your own handwriting. Women could learn to type and get jobs as secretaries, but this also meant that their bosses didn't have to learn. My grandfather was an accountant during this time, and just like any other accountant, he did his work on specially-ruled sheets of paper, pen in hand. Even in academia today, we have stuff like LaTeX but people don't actually work in that, right? I claim ignorance but I'm assuming people still do everything by hand and then figure out how to format it on a computer.
So what defines easy? None of that was easy. In many examples, it's so much harder, not to mention more expensive. Most importantly, no interface comes naturally. Typing is a learned skill, and even if you're young enough to have grown up with keyboards, you still sucked at one point. The same is true of handwriting. In my mind, "easy" only comes in to play when you're comparing two interfaces that use the same fundamental principles. If I build a QWERTY keyboard that requires you to apply ten pounds of pressure to register a keystroke, you can point and say, "that is supposed to be easier."
I guess my point is just that you have to weigh the potential use cases. A full-size keyboard is best for programming, or for writing an internet comment, but it's not ideal for keeping a journal while hiking in the mountains.
To me, it seems like the handheld computer is still yearning for the right input method, and the need grows stronger as the computers get more powerful. Forget comparing the latest smartphone processors to the computers that got us to the moon, they're faster than the ones that we bought a few years ago and still have in our closets! But they aren't that useful, and it's so clearly because of that goddamn little touchscreen keyboard (or depending on how you look at it, our own stubby thumbs). We've tried so many things-- even returning to handwriting-- but they haven't worked. So we keep trying.
The way I see it, we're blocked and the only clear way forward is to devise a novel character input method, which is what these guys are trying to do. I hope that works out. If not, maybe we'll eventually be driven to completely discard the typed character in search of something more expressive and natural for human-computer interfaces. Of course, we can just give up and admit that this 19th century invention is the best we'll ever do.
But seriously, I don't understand the problem they're trying to solve here. Nobody is going to learn to stimulate their muscles in new ways for an interface - an interface is supposed to make things easier. And if they're not using new stimulation patterns, or firing individual motor units, they're just moving their (arms|eyes|faces|...), which can be detected easily enough with a camera.
Not to say that the technology isn't interesting, but I think until we understand the brain much better than we do currently, the only use for BCIs is precisely the market they dismiss in the introduction - the severely disabled.