Hacking Our Five Senses 232
zdude255 writes "Wired is running an article exploring several studies of giving the human brain 'new input devices.' From seeing with your sense of touch to entirely new senses such as sensing direction intuitively, the human brain seems to be capable of interpreting and using new data on the fly. This offers many applications from pilots being able to sense the plane's orientation to the potential recovery of patients with blindness or ear damage. (which helps balance).'It turns out that the tricky bit isn't the sensing. The world is full of gadgets that detect things humans cannot. The hard part is processing the input. Neuroscientists don't know enough about how the brain interprets data. The science of plugging things directly into the brain -- artificial retinas or cochlear implants -- remains primitive. So here's the solution: Figure out how to change the sensory data you want -- the electromagnetic fields, the ultrasound, the infrared -- into something that the human brain is already wired to accept, like touch or sight.'"
Not very new... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's something that's been done for a long time... a radio transfers radio waves into something that we can hear. A clock transfers the current time to something we can see. A compass also shows us direction in a way that we can see. That's what instruments do. This would be better news if it talked about how the scientists are putting it directly into our brains, as opposed to how that's NOT what they're doing; they've been doing this stuff for many thousands of years already.
Re:Not very new... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, we're aware that when the article talks about things we've done in the past, that they're not new. Please don't complain about the last few sentences in the story as if they're the only thing that got said.
"Five" senses? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the "glass half empty." (Score:3, Insightful)
However, having been once nearly driven over by a garbage truck whose operator didn't bother to use the rear-facing camera that was provided so that he could see what's in back of him, I think there's definitely a market for systems that deliver information in a more subtle manner, if that means that people pay more attention to the information that's provided.
It's not just "bad drivers" that this sort of thing helps. If you had systems like this uniformly installed in all vehicles, it would make it much easier to go from driving one car to another. I don't generally let people unfamiliar with my car parallel-park it, because I don't want them to misjudge the corner and scrub my tires or scrape the wheels against the curb. Likewise, I probably wouldn't hop in a big sedan and try to do anything remotely challenging either, because it's been years since I've driven anything that large. But if you had a standardized system in vehicles to communicate to the driver the vehicle's position relative to any nearby obstacles (in the same way we have de facto standardized controls for steering, acceleration, brake, etc.), going from a VW Golf to an C-350 cargo van wouldn't be so much of a challenge. People would step out of one car and into another without a second thought.
Rather than just looking at new technologies as opportunities for laziness (which they certainly can be), it's more helpful to focus on the new scenarios or activities that they make possible for people of average to moderate skill. An analogy with planes might be someone saying that AInstrument Landing Systems are just for pilots who don't know how to land properly. (I don't know the full story on their introduction but I'll bet you a shiny penny that some old pilots, somewhere, probably said just that.) While that's one way of looking at the technology, another way is to consider the number of places where planes can now land, where they'd otherwise have to be diverted due to poor weather conditions, darkness, etc.
Automotive drivers' aids are the same way. While they will probably be used by some drivers who aren't up to snuff, in order to let them get away with things that they shouldn't, they can also allow good drivers to do things that they just accept as impossible or very difficult today.
Re:Not very new... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've lived in and learned my way around several metropolitan areas. I acquired a far better geographic understanding, far faster, in the Denver area than any of the others. I think this is because anywhere in the Denver area, whether you are thinking about it or not, you are aware of your position relative to the same landmarks (the Rocky Mountains). I don't think carrying a compass, or even a GPS, in ones pocket to be looked at when you thought of it would be at all comparable.
Re:I am not so sure I would want (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems, though, that they are looking for interfaces that bypass the cogintive functions and feed data directly to what we'd call feeling. Where a compass will only show you which way is north if you look at and find where the needle is pointing, the belt gives a constant throb in the nortern direction that does not require conscious thought.
There was a story a while back about people getting magnets (those super-strong rare earth ones) embedded under their finger tips. It gave them an ability to feel magnetic fields from sources such as power lines. This gave them an awareness of the fields at all times. It started to change the way they saw the world when they could feel the constant effects of the electricty flowing around them.