Serendipity35

It sounds like a sci-fi scenario, but imagine your brain could access the Internet just by thinking about it, and use it for things like getting directions or communicating in any language by allowing instant language conversion, and you could have this ability to search the Net just by thinking about it.

There's actually a technology being tested by the Food and Drug Administration from Cyberkinetics's called BrainGate that might make you believe that scenario is possible.

Braingate is being tested to help severely motor-impaired persons access computers using only their brains. I don't know that most of us will agree to have a sensor implanted on the motor cortex of our brain just to be able to control a computer with your thoughts, but what if it was not invasive? Perhaps, it's a device you wear like a pair of eyeglasses.

The BrainGate Neural Interface System will probably use a PC as the gateway for not only common computer functions, but also controlling a phone, TV, lights etc. The system's technology platform allows it to sense, transmit, analyze and apply the language of neurons.

For these test patients, their brain signals are being generated, but the signals don't get to the destination - the arm or hand etc. The system lets those signals be interpreted and translated into cursor movements - simplistically comparable to the way that signal would tell your hand to lift.

Taken a step further, the technology would allow a person to control an artificial limb or restore the signal pathway to their own limb.

Will input devices like a keyboard or mouse disappear one day?