This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
"Alright, the implantation surgery was a success, now all we have to do is fire up the remote activation. Throwing the switch in three... two...
Props to him for trying it himself instead of having someone else do it and take all the risk
Valve CEO Gabe Newell pretends to get a hole drilled into his head for a brain-computer interface.
"has long toyed with the idea that your brain should be more connected to your PC"
seems like billionaires' wet dream to be honest
But imagine how easy it would be to ~~track you~~ serve you more personalised ads.
I wish I could close or move windows around with my brain. It would be so nice.
Finally the logo makes sense
TIL Valve is into brain chips.
As far as I can see the company behind it (Starfish Neuroscience) is not affiliated with Valve in any way? (Aside from having the same CEO)
And Newell is Valve because it's his private company
The Valve Deckard was a little more ambitious than had been originally anticipated.
Might be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I don't really see a problem with brain implants. I wouldn't put anything my brain in a thousand years, but if someone's willing to accept the risks, why not? They have the potential to significantly improve quality of life for many people.
That's the challenge with technical advances. It's not just solving the technical problem, it's also solving the societal problem.
If you look back into history, Automated elevators was a major panic until people got comfortable with the idea.
It could become the standard in time, like smartphones. I can easily see it becoming the norm, making it more expensive and difficult to use a normal smartphone instead of some brain implant, much like how "dumbphones" are coming back as overpriced and gimmicky. Maybe they pullsomething similar to the "green bubble" like apple did, alienating people without implants.
This is a very important concern. Tech companies already exert entirely too much power over society through smart phones and their accompanying apps. The damage they would do with direct access to your neurons is incalculable.
The only thing that comforts me is that I firmly expect that society as we know it will entirely collapse before this technology can really be capitalized. It's not a very comforting expectation, but it somehow bothers me less than the idea of techno-fascist corporate feudal states taking control of everyone's thoughts.
It's exactly like AI. Could the technology be useful were it to be used in service of goals that would serve humanity? Absolutely. Will it be used by billionaires in a way that will be harmful to most people in order to further entrench their power? Most definitely.
Another problem is abandonment. When the company goes under or the device becomes outdated and they no longer want to support it the device can't be easily removed. If the device was fixing a disability, the person's disability will be reinstated.
I suspect we will end up in a situation where you have a "mount" that is connected to your brain. The mount is able to be serviced by any company in the field, because it is standard. From there, you have the actual chips which are going to be relatively easy to install and remove, eventually you might even be able to do so at your house. This allows competition while allowing being consumer friendly.
As for the disability side of things, it just means that when your chip is no longer serviced you easily swap it for another companies whose are.
My piercings are against God but technoligarchs think they will convince those people brain chips you can swap out on the fly are okay. lol
Anyways I’ll take one brain chip here in like 5 years.
If I lived in, say, Iain Banks's post-scarcity anarcho-communist utopia The Culture, I'd get a neural lace in a heartbeat. But living in this capitalist dystopia that most of us does, I don't trust corporations to not use this sort of technology for domination over the populace.
For perspectives on how it might go (general vibes, not the same technology) I recommend HYPER-REALITY (6 mins short film) or David Brin's Existence novel.
At some point in humanity's future, I assume that it will be a thing and be widespread. Just too many potential benefits to having high-bandwidth links to the brain not to eventually do it.
But it's a path with a lot of hurdles along the way, and risks.
Will we also get a control valve back on our heads?
Yes, but it belongs to Gaben. Don't touch it.
Wow Valve was on a great series of wins, this is a rare loss for them. Who wants this? Best case people will be sitting in meetings playing Half Life 3 in their brains. I don't really want that.
If it gets me closer to Half-Life 3, then pipe that shit into my brains
Is this what were getting instead of half life 3?
Half life: Alyx required VR.
Half life 3 requires neural integration.
HL3 brain dance confirmed.
