- The Next 25 Years in Tech
- Rethinking How We Use Technology
- The Tech Revolution Has Just Begun
- The IPTV Generation: Previewing Now
- The Factor of 10
- Reengineered for Energy Efficiency
- Way, Way Beyond Web Search
- In the Future, Everything Will Be Wireless
- Home Robot Explosion
- Computing Moves into the Cloud
- Leveling the Playing Field
- Your Own Personal, Virtual World
- Innovation Beyond Moore's Law
- The Grid Takes Over
- Regenerating Our Planet
- Future Concept Designs
- Leading Labs Look to the Future
- The Most Memorable Tech Flops
- Our Early Years
- Still a Place for Your Desktop
- The Artificial Art of Machines
- Vanishing Laptops and Holographic Images
- The Media Company of the Future
- In Sports and Entertainment, Virtual Reality Scores
- Microprocessors: Shrinking Chips and Energy Conservation
- Technology and the Transparent Political System
- Engineering and the Liberal Arts: A Powerful Combination
The Think System
The term cyborg conjures up at best images of a six-million-dollar man (when bionics were cheap) or, at worst, California's "Governator" with his skin peeled off. "I'd say we're already to some degree cyborgs, a humantechnology symbiote," says Microsoft researcher Desney Tan, referring to everything from contact lenses to cochlear implants to hip replacements. His team, including cognitive neuroscientists and a couple of medical doctors, is tackling human-computer interaction to bring out the cyborg in all of us.
Controlling a PC by thinking is just one area the researchers want to understand. Making the computer understand you is also key. "If I'm concentrating on a particular task, maybe the machine should know and not allow interruptions with calls or e-mail," says Tan. The brain can parallel process with the best of them, too, according to Tan, so it's possible you can work away while the computer feeds you other information.
"The human physiology is vastly untapped," says Tan. So how about loaning out your brain? Tan describes Human Aided -Computing as a "fun project" with no application as yet, but it will come. Think of it as distributed computingwhere people loan out their computer's CPU cycles to do some intensive work while the PC is otherwise idlebut using those unused brain cycles instead.
"We'll figure out how to productize it someday," adds Tan.