As a follow-up to my recent post about transhumanism and so-called enhancement technologies, I just found out about the ‘MindSpeller’ project at the Catholic University of Leuven. Here is the article I read, and here is the official site.
A team there has developed a compact, portable device that converts brain signals into words and sentences. It doesn’t need a surgical implant, just wearing a sort of swimming-cap with non-intrusive electrodes on the head. With just a few minutes training, so that it gets to know your individual brain responses, you can make specific characters light up on a computer screen, just by thinking them.
Here is a demo of the process. It’s pretty dull until you realise the implications of what is really happening. Remember that the eye movements are not being tracked, so the letters on the screen are chosen simply by the subject thinking about the letters. This is, quite literally, a form of mind reading.
If developed and put into production it will be an enormous help for people who are paralysed and suffer from speech or language impediments.
Bridges and Tangents 
Yes this would be so amazing for the ‘Bauby’s’ of this world with ‘locked in syndrome’. But one wonders at what point it would cross over from the medical realms into other areas of life. ? ? ? Then your old post about privacy being the sacred space inside really would be challenged :O0
This is certainly the beginning of a possibly amazing development. If this were to be combined with eye movement controls, it would have wonderful potential for the less able in society. My sceptical side would also suggest that it could have implications for use by the military to aid ‘remote’ combat.