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[Karnewarrior]

I think telepathy would be bad in the first place since the brain is obviously not equipped to deal with two brains worth of input. Maybe something like the Email Telepathy above could be worked out but I think any kind of meaningful thought transfer would be overstimulating or drawn out to the point that it would be purposeless.

Also, isn't there a bandwidth crunch going on right now? There are only so many wavelengths you can transmit on economically.

[10ebbor10]

But seriously, telepathy is a solved problem. Unfortunately, it's a solved problem the same way jetpacks are a solved problem - you can't afford it, you don't know how to use it, and for practical reasons it's not all that useful.

No it isn't. We can monitor and stimulate nerves. You can send impulses like muscle controls or other stimulii external to the brain, but anything as far as thoughts go is farther in the future than strong AI. Thoughts and such exist on a higher level than the neurons; that is to say, a pattern of neuronal activity in one brain will not translate to the same thought if copied to a different brain. Being able to both fully decode and then re-encode something in the brain on the level required for anything useful, the symbolic level, requires A: an understanding of neurobiology far exceeding that required to create strong AI, and B: a way of noninvasively and repeatedly scanning a living brain for a complete mapping of thought process. That's damn near impossible, as it requires analyzing trillions of connections, their strengths, their full effects on the nerve cells they are attached to, etc; and it must be redone at the very least once a month, if not once a day or less, as the mapping changes as we form new memories and such. Also note that in doing such a mapping, you have just done the equivalent of uploading your consciousness to the computer in the form of an AI. And many, if not a large majority of the time, even the higher level symbolic representations can not be re-encoded in the framework of the second individual simply because of subtle difference in their thought processes.

There's so much wrong with this that I'm not going to bother going into it, but instead I'm going to dismiss it by pointing out the obvious: you're apparently using some particular definition of "telepathy" that is neither useful nor at all relevant to this discussion. There's no need to "understand" the brain, or convert thoughts, or decode anything. There's no need to analyze trillions of connections, or "map thought processes" or any of the stuff you're talking about at all.

If you can simply capture words from the verbal portion of the brain, transmit them via wireless connection and send them via vintage 1960s style email and allow others to receive email via that same wireless network and receive it in the audio and/or language processing centers of their brain...viola, you have telepathy.Not really Telepathy, more like hand free phones. Besides, it doesn't work, Current tech can barely seperate Yes from No. The more words you add to the programs library, the higher the error rate becomes.

The critical portion of that was already linked in one of my posts a few pages back in a video showing a guy wearing a strap on headpiece (no implant at all) that allowed him to type by thinking about letters. Give two people those headsets, hook them up to wireless internet and let them talk via any kind of instant messenger protocol and once again...viola, you have telepathy.One letter at a time. Besides, that's employing the visual centers of your brain, so any kind of distraction and the whole system crashes. Hell, just recieving the other's person's voice would be enough, possibly resulting in a mental feed back loop.

Besides, telepathy is communicating by minds, not controlling a chat program. Unless you're directly delivering the message in the others persons brain, you're not using telepathy, just misusing a definition.

While you're at it, go watch the also previously linked videos showing brain to computer interfaces extracting what the visual cortex is perceiving to digital video. Send that via the same method.Those were done with serious implants though, and don't work that well with humans. They tend to get confused by what we actually see and what we think about.

If I can look at hot chicks on the beach, and stream a video of what I'm seeing along with text and/or speech and/or text-to-speech saying "wow she's hot!" to my buddy in another state in real time and have him receive it...all with neither of us moving a muscle, or touching any kind of external device like a  computer/phone/etc...as far as I'm concerned that qualifies as telepathy.
Unfortunately it doesn't. Even your proposition doens't fit it. You're going to have to wear a funny hat and carry at least a small computer and heavy transmitter with you, and he has to watch a screen/wear headphones.

Directly delivering sound and video to the brain works, but it's neither enjoyable nor usefull. Also really lacks in quality.

I don't even know what the point is of all this other stuff you're talking about.

One final point that it I hesitate to mention because you're liable to read it and forget about all of the above and focus on it to the exclusion of all else: Data is data. Understanding or "mapping" data is irrelevant. So long as you have a means of sending and receiving data the actual nature of the data is not very important, because a very simple learning process will allow humans to do the necessary processing.
It is though, as based on said data you're going to poke around in people's brains. There's a lot of noise going in the brains, and your computer needs to filter it out. For example, thinking about things partly uses the same neurons as doing it. Not enough to get a clear image, but enough for noise. So called mirror neurons activate not only when we do something, but also when we see and hear people doing stuff.


For example...no, wait. Giving an example is actually kind of redundant, because all possible examples would demonstrate this. Right now you're looking at little squiggly lines of light and dark on a screen, and yet you've learned to process those squiggles as things like words, sounds, and concepts. There is no fundamental relationship between these squiggles and the ideas going through your head as you look at them. It is purely a learned means of communication.

If I can send something to your brain and you can receive it and send something back...we are capable of telepathy. It doesn't really matter what it is you're sending. Raw sound, images, video, heat maps, morse code, anything. Through practice you would be able to learn to use that medium for communication, just like you've learned to press sequences of buttons that have nothing to do with your thoughts to make squiggly lines that have nothing to do with your thoughts...yet nevertheless are able to communicate your thoughts. Or, just like you're able to vibrate your vocal chords in ways that have nothing to do with you thoughts to make sounds that have nothing to do with your thoughts...yet nevertheless are able to communicate your thoughts.In that case, me learning sign language, and carrying a mirror in front of me and a camera on a helmet on my head counts as telepathy too. In fact, I'm using fewer technology, fewer effort and the communication will be clearer.

It is no different.Or is it?

When I think telepathy, I think a sort of "sixth sense" type of communication. Non-verbal, non-visual, non-the-other-three.

Stimulating the auditory part of the brain (so you literally hear people talking to you, despite there being no sound) might still count though.

We can do that though. That's how state of the art ear implants work. Please enjoy listening to a toneless metalic voice.

Give me telepathy, and the ability to send made up visual/audio/tactile data, and DnD will be that much more awesome.

You might be suprised how distorted that information might be. The human brain can do weird things. This means that sending thoughts rather than just imagery is possible, but getting it to work possibly would require you to have an extensive baseline.

I think telepathy would be bad in the first place since the brain is obviously not equipped to deal with two brains worth of input. Maybe something like the Email Telepathy above could be worked out but I think any kind of meaningful thought transfer would be overstimulating or drawn out to the point that it would be purposeless.

Also, isn't there a bandwidth crunch going on right now? There are only so many wavelengths you can transmit on economically.

Well, your brain can do quite a lot of things. Problem will be conflicting information and that your brain already has problems with discerning things you do from things other people do, as it uses the same neurons for both. Hence things like empathy and Jealousy exist.

Yes, there's a serious bandwith crunch going on at the moment. In fact, if they don't hurry up the IPv6 protocols, mobile networks might overload and fail as early as 2013=14

[Karnewarrior]

So our future telepathy will be wired...

Uhhh....

[alway]

Also, isn't there a bandwidth crunch going on right now?

It's just being used in a highly inefficient way. If you were to use a more distributed system, instead of, say, cell towers covering a several mile radius, you could have an incredibly higher information density. If you've got 1000 signals, each requiring their own bandwidth segment, for a very large radius thing like a cell tower, that's going to take up 1000 units of bandwidth over that entire tower's coverage area. If you've got those same 1000 signals distributed around the same several square mile area, but with a more distributed system with coverage areas measured in a few dozen meters, you will be using only a few bandwidth units, and only in the smaller coverage areas in which they exist. In such a case, you have a few pockets where you may be using a dozen or so units of bandwidth, but most would only have one, or none at all. You could even mesh this with existing networks simply by choosing the smallest available coverage radius, allowing deployment of these smaller cell networks to only the places experiencing high use. So yeah; that's a trivial issue. Particularly as the technology to do such a distributed network becomes cheaper while bandwidth licences become more costly.
And that's even assuming there is a physical limits-based bandwidth crunch. Which there isn't. It's just monopolizing telecoms figuring out they can charge out the nose by not upgrading their networks.

[Graknorke]

I think that just having something like that guy with the arm-nerve implant would be pretty cool. And there's something in the video about it wiring up to his wife, and being able to feel the signals from her brain to her hand.
I thought that was pretty impressive on its own.

[alway]

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-08/world-first-scientists-surgically-implant-bionic-eye-blind-patient

[i2amroy]

As alway mentioned, the answer is to better distribute your bandwidth. If you can have access points on every car and street corner, then you can redistribute the bandwidth that we do have in such a way that it can be used much more easily. (Plus the big problem with IPv6 is more the fact that we are running out of IP's addresses themselves, not so much out of bandwidth.)

As for telepathy, to address the problems of processing and physical space, you could set up a system with computer power spread throughout the country (sort of similar to our current telephone system). Then the chip that would be inside of your head would only need to do a minuscule amount of processing, and would otherwise simply work as a transmitter/receiver device for the information that would actually be processed by the computers owned by the telepathy company. Sure it would cause a slight lag, but being able to dial thoughts to somebody else's head is still probably faster then the time it would take to call them by phone.

Also I would like to emphasize the plasticity of the brain, especially when people are young. If a new technology comes out that allows access to new forms of communication, then the brain will adapt quickly to use it. It's the same reason why people who embed magnets in their hand and things like the north paw can quickly learn to rely on those devices for information. It's also the same reason why monkeys that have never been able to see red/green can learn to see it within a month of being given the ability to do so. If a new form of communication comes out, even if our brains don't have the ability to understand it now, they will adapt to be able to do so, given enough time.

[Graknorke]

That magnet thing seems pretty cool. I would get one of those if they were cheaper. Just because it seems like it would be convenient and pretty cool. And eliminate the need for getting compasses out.

Brain elasticity is also a thing that is definitely very strong. People can pick up new things pretty easily. If people don't pick something up, it's usually because they don't want to do something, rather than not being able to. For example, my grandmother is decent at working computers, but she can't do much with them because she prefers to store everything on floppy disks and CDs. If it's not a disk, she's not interested. But the actual act of operating the machine is little trouble to her.

[Armok]

Does she count USB drives as disks?

[Graknorke]

Does she count USB drives as disks?

No.

If it doesn't spin and she can't remove it, she doesn't want anything on it.
I don't really understand it.

[tonyburke]

What a ridiculous assumption. The question is based on a false premise i.e. the misconception that older people are less competent with computers & new technology in general. I started fooling around with PCs when I was over 50 and build my own as well as use various operating systems i.e Linux I've dumped Windows, it's designed for the simple minded and isn't very secure. My baby boomer friends are the same and I know just as many young technologically incompetent people as older ones. You should be sure of your facts before making ridiculous assumptions. Keeping up with technology has nothing to do with age, it has more to do with environment and how conditioned one is by this insane society. Older people are more likely to have awoken to the fact that our perceived reality is bogus while younger people are still wandering in the dark unable to swallow the red pill.

[Descan]

I was with you riiiiight up until that end sentence there.

[Karnewarrior]

What a ridiculous assumption. The question is based on a false premise i.e. the misconception that older people are less competent with computers & new technology in general. I started fooling around with PCs when I was over 50 and build my own as well as use various operating systems i.e Linux I've dumped Windows, it's designed for the simple minded and isn't very secure. My baby boomer friends are the same and I know just as many young technologically incompetent people as older ones. You should be sure of your facts before making ridiculous assumptions. Keeping up with technology has nothing to do with age, it has more to do with environment and how conditioned one is by this insane society. Older people are more likely to have awoken to the fact that our perceived reality is bogus while younger people are still wandering in the dark unable to swallow the red pill.

Try not to take it as a personal hit, as we've all had experience with older folk both competent and incompetent. It's a thread questioning wether or not we as a society will be able to adapt as the information revolution accelerates. Many older folk were left behind, overwhelmed by the speed at which they were expected to absorb new information. Hell, many young people are too, resulting in the kind of stupid facebook posts and Yahoo asks featured on memebase.

I'm more concerned about politics right now and how America is going to solidify just as the Information era hits it's peak. I'm not sure how that'll turn out, as it could go terrible, but I'm optimistic. Overall acceptance is cultural and not age driven.

[Scoops Novel]

How well do older generations get the internet? I get the impression they still treat it as all work and no play.

[Graknorke]

How well do older generations get the internet? I get the impression they still treat it as all work and no play.

It's a horrible trap full of paedophiles and people wanting to steal your credit card numbers and illegal pornography and teh gays corrupting the youth.
Toned down and shortened version of a rant I had to listen to a couple of weeks ago.