An article in the New York Times a week or so ago reported on ... a report ( huh? ) ... actually a letter published in the journal Nature about a research project in which monkeys with neural contacts embedded in their brains had learned to control an external mechanical "arm". The report in the NY Times seemed to be accurate with the facts that it had "reported" from the Nature article but it went just a touch hyperbolic with the flourishes.
Don't get me wrong. This is an amazing and wonderful step in advancing the understanding of the so-called "human-machine interface". It's a wonderful thing that this technology is being expanded and improved and so useful to the humans who need it and use it.
But; the article from the Times went out on the wire services and is being reproduced all over the place and it looks to me like not all credit is falling where it is due and that's just not OK.
The by-lined reporter for the Times, Benedict Carey, says, "The findings [attrbuted to "scientists" by Carey] suggest that brain-controlled prosthetics, while not practical, are at least technically within reach."
You have to keep the right frame in the right place Benedict! This is a new project and swell, to be sure, but "brain-controlled prosthetics" have been around for awhile. And that's without even picking on the sloppy construction of your statement. Is a wooden leg controlled by farts?
But getting to what must be the gist, you're talking about motorized mechanical prothetics which are controlled by the wearer -- that is, the wearer's brain -- via some means of bio-communication.
So, dude! What about the Boston Elbow? Patents for electro-mechanical wearer-controllable prosthetics go back to 1970 and the very practical "Boston Elbow" with biofeedback control (read "brain") was developed in that decade. Imperfect, maybe but still quite wonderful and definitely practical. Since that invention there have been many, many improvements and variations and then extending to other limbs and other organs.
I got involved myself in 1981 or '82 when I built a system to control a TRS-80 Color Computer using a couple of different bio-input methods. One was a simple galvanic skin response gizmo (a "lie detector") and the other was actually a slightly jiggered "biofeedback" Heathkit. There were demonstration programs for word processing and for house control but it could have been programmed for whatever. Rudimentary, sure. Not a brain implant, no; but still brain -- definitely not fart -- controlled. It even got as far as the regional finals of a competition held by Johns Hopkins University and the Tandy Corp. for microcomputers (as they were called in the day) to aid the handicapped. It was beat by the likes of Kurzweil's original "reader"
So; yes the continued amazing advancement is way beyond swell, but "practical" has been around for awhile and it's all be brain controlled. OK? Got it? Thanks.
