I just read a description of a new project - being funded by the National Science Foundation - to develop what they call the “Neurophone system,” a direct brain to phone interface. I find it amazing that we’re awarding grants - regardless of how small they are in the grand scheme of things (Neurophone has received around $300K so far) - for projects like this when we have much more pressing problems that are far more worthy of immediate attention, problems that could certainly interrupt many of the assumed controls that concepts like the Neurophone likely depend upon. Things like electrical resources, a sufficiently idle market, or even the continued operation of entities able to dole out funding. In other words, a collapsed society doesn’t need brain phones.
What’s also irritating is to see “green rationalization” for these concepts in their abstracts. (The NeuroPhone promises “new energy-efficient techniques and algorithms for low-cost wireless EEG headsets and mobile phones,” among other things.) I’m fairly certain that our mobile phones aren’t at the top of the energy-inefficiency list, that is, as long as we have airplanes, cars, trucks, buses, buildings, homes, appliances, etc.
In my company, we are continually evaluating research and development on the basis of what is needed. Until the items of greatest need are supplied, we don’t even consider addressing anything that is purely a matter of “wouldn’t this be neat?” The skewed sense of priority that enables projects like this to be funded reminds me of much more clearly sad situations, like the dilapidated homes of gaming addicts, where the water has been shut off, the cupboards are bare, and the children are malnourished, yet the computers are running.
We need to get real.
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