I had the idea the other to day to start a list of hackable cybernetic devices. I'm thinking things like the sub-vocalization we saw earlier in the week, the latest brain activity scanners (MEG, fMRI, EEG), brain stimulation stuff (tDCS), anything that could let you interact with a computer in subtle and more integrated ways than a keyboard/mouse.

Does anyone know of a similar list already started?

I started to compile a list of Human <> Digital I/O a while ago. This wasn't written up as a real article, more for my own notes, but I wanted to publish it for (a) sharing and (b) to be in the public domain so none of my employers can call dibs on my high-level thinking & resources.

link - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oBe27BKbpvts7UNANxv9...

I design consumer electronics, mostly focused on early stages including concept / design / enclosure / HW component & feature architecture. My job is to build digital stuff that is intuitive, useful, and buildable.

I figured that it would be a useful exercise to survey a relatively complete a landscape of "I/O" available for both humans and digital technology.

If we start with the (imperfect) premise that humans are machines, then we can look at all the sensory apparatus we have to determine what access we have to the doors of perception. What are the different types of the nervous system's inputs? Repeat the exercise for electronic machines, to see what tools we have that can interact with body and material. What are the different types of tech's inputs and outputs? Human I/O and Digital I/O.

The overlap of those two sets maps the possible ways human physiology might interact with digital technology. To be clear this only covers the most physical & materialist levels, but it's a start and a useful tool for me.

I have a separate list of actual companies and products that have shipped consumer-facing biosensor tech, but I haven't added it to this doc yet. One more thing on the to-do list...

That's very cool! Thanks for sharing.

I was thinking of a list of hardware devices with some notes on how hard they were to repurpose and experiment with. Could be a tough field to stay on top of though.

I missed the sub-vocalization story. Do you have the link to it?

Pretty sure I saw it on HN but not finding it now. It was a link to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization

So could we have a relevant ads this way finally?

And they can feed a stream of your dissident/criminal thoughts to the state thought police. Win-win.

This is the correct takeaway.

Is mind-reading the same thing as measuring electrical activity in the brain?

Far from it. Reading electrical activity is just the tip of the iceberg;

Where does the mind come into it? Calling what these things do mind reading feels a bit overblown to me.

Very overblown. The trick with the color-changing lamp is more of a hack than a true BCI. It's reading your brain, but not something occuring in your conscious thoughts.

If it's implemented like I think it is, there's an observable signal in the brain from looking at a high frequency oscillating light source. What's not happening is an analysis of signals to recognize you're consciously thinking about green or holding the concept "green" in your mind.