As a CEO you might think it’s enough that the social network you created has over a billion subscribers. You might think it’s enough that your company makes hundreds of billions of revenue a year and will easily make over a trillion someday. You might be thankful for the fact that you’ve created an entire economy on the internet responsible for the careers and incomes of millions and millions of people around the world. You might also feel great about the fact that you’ve connected so many lives, inspired so many workers, and been involved in what could be considered the largest social phenomenon of the 21st century. But if you were just that guy you wouldn’t be Mark Zuckerberg.
If you were Mark Zuckerberg you’d be saying “next.” Because that’s what the Facebook CEO is always thinking. How can we improve? How can we innovate? How can we not only be part of the world but how can we become the world? The latest news from Facebook might shock you with regard to how integrated the company really wants to be with our minds. According to AV Club:
After years of using your monkey fists like a chump, Facebook is now working on a device that will allow you spew status updates directly from your mind–no typing, or single moment of reflection while the impulse travels from your cortex to your fingers necessary, ever again. It’s an innovation that could allow for much easier internet communication for people with disabilities, as well as for people who find their current, physically distinct relationship with Facebook far too cold and distant.
The initiative was unveiled at a recent presentation during Facebook’s F8 conference, where Regina Dugan–a former director of DARPA who now heads up Facebook’s neighborly-sounding Building 8 lab–revealed that the company has tasked 60 engineers with designing a brain-computer interface, one that will allow you to type up to 100 words per minute, just by it reading your mind. If all that sounds somewhat ominous, Dugan reassures everyone that the process won’t involve invasive implants.
Rather, Facebook will simply use optical imaging to scan your brain 100 times per second, listening to your innermost thoughts, then translating then into text right in front of your eyes, your followers, and Facebook’s consortium of targeted advertisers. But again, definitely no implants! “Implanted electrodes simply won’t scale,” says empathetic human person Regina Dugan.
I don’t know. The sentence “spew status updates directly from your mind” made me kind of nauseous. But bottom line is this. Watch out world, because Facebook is going to become your world.
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