As of 2017, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth is worth over 59 billion USD. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the CEO and co-founder of Facebook. Having earned all of that money, what future plans does Zuckerberg have for the top social media website? While he hasn’t revealed all of his goals, he’s uncovered that his team at Facebook has been working on mind reading technology.
Typing From Your Mind
The head of Facebook’s experimental technologies Building 8, Regina Dugan, has stated the company’s goal was to allow mind-to-text at 100 words per minute. If you can’t fathom how quick that is, the average typing speed according to wikipedia is around 33 WPM. Note that when typing, you have all five fingers at your dispense.
When texting, you type using two thumbs, so it’s expected that your WPM will be much lower than it would be when using a full keyboard. Now, imagine texting at 100 WPM, three times faster than the average typing speed. That’s crazy!
As amazing as this sounds, this is just the beginning.
Facebook Mind Reading’s Universal Language
Dugan has mentioned another mind reading feature that Facebook is working on, which is to allow transmission of thoughts directly from brain to brain. She has also stated that languages will no longer be a boundary One could think in Japanese and the receiver could understand it in Spanish. This is an extraordinary leap in technology and could tremendously increase international relations (and also put translators out of work). But right now, this is just a vision for Facebook, and currently there’s no telling how close the company is to achieving this vision. I suppose we’ll have to wait in anticipation for the time being.
Is Facebook Mind Reading Real?
Smartphones have long been acknowledged as an addiction and a barrier in social situations. “Put your phone away” is not an uncommon command by parents, and can even become a cause for argument in romantic relationships. Smartphone users are easily distracted in class, dates, gatherings, and other atmospheres. Often times, we sacrifice the time spent with people in front of us to spend time with people away from us via the web.
Regina Dugan proposes that the solution to this problem is to develop a method of texting that doesn’t avert your eyes from the conversation at hand, hence the mind reading technology. This would definitely speed up the process of texting, but many don’t believe that it will extinguish distractions. The only difference would be that you won’t look distracted, but you’ll still be typing away in your head.
Facebook’s risk of privacy
It’s one thing for our data to be taken from our input into technology, but to have our ideas stolen right from our brains is a whole other matter. Dugina assures us that Facebook does not intend to read all of our thoughts. The mind reading technology targets a specific part of the brain where thoughts are communicated into speech. Hopefully Facebook will take their time with perfecting this, because fiddling with people’s brains is no simple matter.
Facebook’s progress on mind reading
They still have a long way to go, but the company is definitely making progress. Stanford University has already achieved a thought-typing mechanism that allows paralyzed patients to type eight words per minutes with just their minds. Dugan has been observing and analyzing with her own team and working with other universities to improve that technology.
Building 8 has also been experimenting with skin. By utilizing vibrations on a person’s arm, skin can be used to receive words and phrases. This sounds absurd, but the team has already succeeded in getting a person to accurately differentiate between three shapes, colors, and actions simply by touch.
The mind reading technology and communication by touch might seem like social advancements at first glance, but Facebook is also hoping to better the lives of disabled people. Having already accomplished a lot in the social media field, perhaps he is planning to move on to medicinal improvements. Whatever the case, Facebook sure is impressive.