http://mashable.com/2013/10/31/neurocam/
This article caught my attention as being not just advanced - but BEYOND. I love to see technology that brings to mind something I saw on Star Trek years ago. But this seems beyond anything they would ever show on Sci-fi TV - unless it was Sci-fi/horror.
Neurocam and it's accompanying app was demonstrated at the Human Sensing 2013 conference in Japan recently. It is a whole system in which a headband holds an iPhone next to the
wearer’s temple. The phone has a special prism so that the camera
can record things from the wearer’s point of view. There are EEG sensors that will scan the brain for spikes in interest on a scale of 0-100. If the wearer's interest level goes above 60 - the device will begin recording and store each recorded file in a journal format so the wearer can remember the things that interested him or her.
As it says in the article, advertisers would love to get their hands on that info - and as such - a large advertising company is teaming up with the company that has created this prototype.
I don't seem to mind so much the personalized ads that we have talked about in class. If Facebook or other websites can show me something that I really like, as opposed to an ad that I find annoying - well - that hasn't upset me as much as some others have expressed.
But the idea of something like this being the future of advertising really does concern me. They say it will capture a "life log" and maybe be used for purposes other than direct advertising - but it still makes me very uneasy to have anything "reading my mind."
And then of course there is the danger - as there is evidence that cell phones are linked to brain tumors. So a question seems to be: will technology just ignore serious health concerns?!? As we have discussed in class - where are the limits to what we will accept?
