By Peter

This week is a filler week between chapters while Amanda does some work to help me with publicizing the strip. Last month’s issue of Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (Don’t you love that name? Straight out of the 19th century!) featured articles on Brain-Computer Interaction. In other words, how can you control computers with just your brain? One way that people have been using for years now is to put an implant in the brain. Needless to say, the only people who have that done are ones who are very seriously disabled and have no other way to communicate.

However, people are looking into electroencephalogram (EEG) technology as a non-invasive way to do this. The picture above shows what the technology looks like today. (This picture is from the Danish Master’s program in Medicine and Technology.) It’s not that far from what Joshua has on his head in the last chapter.

Of course, it’s quite a step from detecting brain waves to putting images in our brains. That, I’m afraid, is still only a figment of my imagination.