Re-Wiring The Mind To Accomodate Tongue-Interface Always-On Internet Presences

Fantastic video sent to me by @spencernobleman, about an electronic device which converts images from a camera into electric signals on the tongue, enabling a blind person to - in essence - see.

They have some worthwhile diagrams in this video, showing the typical pathways which stimulus travels through the eyes into the visual cortex. Then they show one with the augmented pathway of the tongue leading up to another part of the brain, then forging interpetive connections with the visual cortex.

A number of consequences of such a technology appeared before me upon watching this:

  1. A major part of the popularity of the cigarette as a product, is that it satisfies the oral fixation which was imprinted in youth: sucking on the mother’s breast being associated through repeated stimulus with the feeling of safety, security and nourishment.
  2. An electronic device held in the mouth would provide these same emotional subconscious payoffs.
  3. The tongue is an extremely dense and rich set of cells, individual sensors and patterned areas already differentiated by innate function to receive different types of information: sour, salty, sweet, etc.
  4. First of all, imagine if the devices were flavored, or if by manipulating them in your mouth: chewing them, sucking on them, you were able to release a steady stream of chemicals, enhancing the existing oral high you would get from the device.
  5. Second, get rid of the cameras. Use them on normally sighted people, with the digital input coming from customizable ambient web feeds and channels. The user would be able to experience data directly in their mouth, and have it sent and interpreted in alternative parts of the brain which we currently only barely acccess in day-to-day life or normal modern computer.
  6. Twitter users would be able to be voices inside of one another’s heads - always on, always there, sharing thoughts, dreaming together. Social security enhancing the sensation of biosecurity, suckling.

My moral and aesthetic judgements about this remain neutral. Any technology will expand to fill all possible uses, as Ellul said. Looks like it’s time to get started on the hybrd cunnilingus/glossolalia iPhone app.


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This entry was written by enjoying autumn, posted on January 16, 2009 at 7:51 pm.

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2 Comments

  1. Timothy Obama
    Posted January 16, 2009 at 8:01 pm | Permalink

    http://thegrumpyowl.wordpress.com/2006/04/26/tongue-interface/

    Plus

    http://www.toptechnews.com/news/Resear...ace/story.xhtml?story_id=12100CABZSC8

    At the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, researchers are developing a system that will use the tongue as the interface for Navy SEAL divers, Army Rangers, and other front-line soldiers. Given the very science-fiction-esque name of “Brain Port,” the technology enables sonar echoes to be detected via the underused sensory organ, leaving the user’s hands and eyes free to respond to immediate dangers.

    “Most of the human-computer interaction so far has been on using the eyes, ears, and hands,” said Dr. Geri Gay, professor of Communications and Information Sciences at Cornell University and an expert on interface design.

    “Everything nowadays is so ubiquitous with mobile computing, and we need to find new, hands-free ways of interacting for environments where your hands and eyes are busy,” she noted. “I could see something like this being used in cars.”

    Infra-red tongue vision for soldiers

    Funded by the famed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — most commonly known as DARPA — the project also aims to enable infrared vision via the tongue, resulting in the appropriate tongue-twister of “infrared-tongue vision.”

    With infrared-tongue vision, divers, soldiers, or pilots could see behind themselves or move in the dark without night-vision goggles, according to project lead scientist Anil Raj.

  2. Timothy Obama
    Posted January 19, 2009 at 12:32 am | Permalink

    A common blood pressure drug could help people who have witnessed traumatic events, such as the London bombings, to block out their distressing memories. [...]

    The drug has been shown to interfere with the way the brain stores memories. [...]

    However there are concerns that a drug which can alter memories could be misused, perhaps by the military who may want soldiers to become desensitised to violence.

    http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005...08/02/block-out-those-nasty-memories/

2 Trackbacks

  1. By @tmbchr » Sensory Substition & Noogenic Cymatoglyphs for the Blind on January 20, 2009 at 3:05 am

    [...] See also: Re-Wiring The Mind To Accomodate Tongue-Interface Web-Browsing [...]

  2. By @tmbchr » BEYOND IDENTITY. An Philosophical Analysis of Transcendent Post-Corporate Consciousness Technologies on January 22, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    [...] within the human brain can be re-trained so that electrical input coming in from the tongue can be re-wired and translated to the visual cortex as, if not totally equivalent, then analogous to visual [...]

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