Think touch screens or frictionless Minority Report-esque interfaces are cool? If you answered “yes,” then you are a lame old person who doesn’t keep up with the times. Let us school you, gramps. Today, it’s all about controlling technology WITH YOUR MIND!
And mind-controlled gadgetry is exactly what Nokia’s ThinkContacts project is aiming for. The app allows users to scroll through their phone’s contacts list using nothing but the power of their thoughts.
But before you get too excited with visions of Scanners and Inception dancing in your head, as the above video shows, we’re not in sci-fi territory quite yet.
ThinkContacts works via a NeuroSky headset connected to your phone by bluetooth. The headset measures your brainwaves and sends the data to the ThinkContacts app which quantifies your brainwaves in measurements of both “meditation” and “attention.” If the user’s attention measures below 30%, the contact list will scroll to the left. If the attention levels are above 70%, the contact list will scroll to the right. In order to make a call, the user only has to get their meditation levels above 80%.
While the practical applications of ThinkContact showcased in the above video aren’t very convincing (it’s really looking pretty lame at this point in its development), the concept for using brainwaves to control phones and other gadgets isn’t completely outside the realm of possibility. But for the time being, we’re all just going to have to stick to using our hands or voice-recognition software in order to call our friends and family–just like they did in the old days.
via singularityhub
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