We’re all used to endless updates from Facebook HQ. But this month’s revelation that they’re researching technology to read your mind takes things to a whole new level! Should we be alarmed? Or excited?

Much of this has only been speculated about until now, as Facebook have been highly secretive about what they were working on. However, at their recent company conference, they announced plans for two ambitious projects: one to develop a system for letting you type with just your thoughts, and another to let you “hear” using vibrations on your skin. This would be done through brain-computer interfaces — devices that can read neural activity and translate it into digital signals, and vice versa.

As well as its brain-computer interface, the company is working on a wide range of secret projects that use technology in ways never before imagined. Those include special ways of making people sense touch and re-wiring people’s brains. Using brain implants, people can already type eight words a minute. Facebook’s goal, working with researchers at several U.S. universities, is to make the system non-invasive, as well as fast enough so that people can type 100 words a minute just by thinking.

All of this is happening inside ‘Building 8’, the secretive Facebook unit that is exploring these technologies. It is headed up by Regina Dugan, who led a similar group at Alphabet Inc’s Google and was previously director of the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

“It sounds impossible, but it’s closer than you may realise,” Ms Dugan said.

The key question for us, is how will these developments be utilised? And how might it benefit business?

Possible uses include helping disabled people and “the ability to text your friend without taking out your phone”.

A video played at Facebook’s recent conference showed two Facebook employees talking to each other through touch. As one employee, Frances, wore an electronic device on her arm, the other, Freddy, used a computer program to send pressure changes to her arm.

“If you ask Frances what she feels,” Dugan said, “she’ll tell you that she has learned to feel the acoustic shape of a word on her arm.”

The objective from Facebook’s perspective is to take the lead in the burgeoning field of augmented reality, which integrates our online and offline lives using a variety of still yet-to-be-built devices.

“The goal of an [augmented reality] system is to have a much more blended physical and digital world,” Dugan told The Verge in an interview. In Facebook’s view, the road to AR will be paved with the smartphone camera. But eventually, it leads to the brain — which is where Dugan and her team come in.

Dugan states that Facebook’s goal is to develop something it calls a ‘brain click’ — a way to complete tasks in augmented reality using your mind. You could brain click to dismiss a notification that popped up on your AR glasses, for example. Researchers at Building 8, who have teamed up with medical institutions around the country, want to turn the brain into an input device, starting with letting people type with their thoughts.

Even just being able to say yes or no with our brains would radically change the way we interact with technology. AR glasses that receive inputs directly from your brain would be ideal, Dugan says, because that would further reduce the disconnect that technology creates between people and their surroundings.

I welcome the idea that digital communications and technology might become more inclusive if these kind of developments break down traditional barriers around particular disabilities. From a brand or business perspective this can only be a positive thing – reaching more people regardless of ability. The concerns come, obviously, with the idea of mind reading, and the alarming aspects of this kind of technology will really depend on exactly how invasive it is, and how consent is given for use. Watch this space!

Image source: Facebook

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