You may have already seen this jaw-dropping video which demonstrates new technology developed at UC Berkeley which uses Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models to decode and visually display what people are seeing in their mind's eye. Yes, really, we're getting close to a version of Inception becoming a reality. And the way this is done may remind you of something in 3D virtual world/graphics technology:
They watched two separate sets of Hollywood movie trailers, while fMRI was used to measure blood flow through the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information. On the computer, the brain was divided into small, three-dimensional cubes known as volumetric pixels, or “voxels.”
Voxels, of course, are the 3D rendering technology used in this 3D engine that garnered a lot of buzz and controversy last Summer, and when it came up, 3D graphics innovator John Carmack told me he was planning to make a voxel renderer of his own, relatively soon. Which means we are reaching a point where this is a plausible statement: The future of 3D graphics and virtual worlds will not be images we create on computers, but the dreams and images rendered from our mind's eye.
Yes, that is quite a possible future: not World of Warcraft, but World of Dreamcraft. Not Second Life, but Second Memory. If you haven't seen the video, oh you surely must. Click below to do so:
Hat tip: Kottke.org.
Random Acts of Virtality . . . Consider: The "real" world is manifested FROM our minds, not necessarily reflected IN our minds;-D Minds gather using physical brains, churning out manifestational reality by coalescing energy from patterns of thought. The "reality" is we do not "know" what comes first . . . but we are running full tilt towards understanding.
Posted by: Gwenete Writer Sinclair | Monday, September 26, 2011 at 05:39 PM
I just can't wait until this is available to *everyone* who has an fMRI machine at home! ;)
Posted by: Tateru Nino | Monday, September 26, 2011 at 06:34 PM
No home MRI yet... but we do have EEG headset toys available at under $100, with the chip producer claiming they have a sensitivity comparable to medical/research units.
They probably won't be the next big wave in toy interface technology because, as it turns out, about half the population is too dumb to control their own brainwaves. Wetware failure.
BUT it does demonstrate that technologies you never thought would get to the consumer market sometimes do. I don't expect MRI in a box anytime soon, but I wouldn't be surprised by the emergence of another imaging technology that would lend itself to mass production.
If they're smart, they'll build it into a pair of designer sunglasses or a stylish cap.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 06:59 AM
I think a bit of computer enhancement via something like Second Life might clear things up, help us focus our desires. Many of us will want to be someplace, not just floating in our thoughts, drifting about in the clutter of memories and conceptual nightmares that lurk undetected in the dark tunnels of our minds. Well most of us, I don't know about Hamlet, he has a reputation; "...whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer..."
Posted by: Recka Wuyts | Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 09:16 AM
You know what struck me when watching the actual video is that "mind movies" is really a poor description or metaphor for what really was going on there! That was amazing to watch. If you look closely you see that it's not a movie at all - it's a rapid-fire, continuous reality-model construction with endless associative images - similar but not quite the same as the picture being viewed - swapped into place as if to compare them to the real image.
As I mentioned on your Plurk, I don't really know how useful this would be for creating a virtual reality game, where we depend on *some* measure of stability of the model. And the equipment needed to do this sort of thing is still vastly too expensive to expect casual consumer use anytime soon. Instead what this shows is a potential tool that might give vast insight into how people really think, what sort of mental realities they really live in. This could be quite useful in therapy but also is a potential power over not just our public lives but our most private thoughts, and its application needs to be watched closely for such abuses of power.
Posted by: Ananda Sandgrain | Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 12:40 PM