Imagine if you could control your iPhone with your mind. How would that actually work? Would sad emotions automatically pull up cute animal YouTube clips? Would you use your brain as a cursor to hit buttons? Would you type text messages by thinking words . . . and if so, how do you stop from thinking words *BUTTS* that you didn’t *ARMPITS* actually want to send?
These are the questions both asked and answered in a new series of concept videos imagining a day in the life of having a brain-computer interface (BCI). We are on the precipice of computer chips being able to read sizable pieces of human thought while companies like Meta and Snap have funded research in this industry estimated to reach $3.3 billion by 2026. Just as designers needed to invent modalities like pinch-to-zoom to make touchscreen smartphones feasible, so too will they need to create new interfaces for us to focus our jumbled thoughts into organized bits.
The concepts seen here were created by Card79, a Bay Area design firm that previously helped design both an earlobe wearable and a surgical robot for Elon Musk’s BCI company Neuralink. “I remember being in a meeting [at Neuralink],” recalls Afshin Mehin, founder of Card79. “They had three drill bits in the room, and they asked, ‘What size drill bit would you be willing to drill into your head?’ I said . . . ‘None of them? . . . Maybe that one?’ [But] the more and more we see this stuff, the more it normalizes it. Just being exposed to it, I think we’re subconsciously becoming more familiar with what this could do.”
What if we don’t want to talk? Another rich modality within BCI could be thinking kinesthetically, and actually imagining physical movements that the computer can read. Of course, training your brain to communicate through imagined physical actions is, pardon the pun, a heady idea. So Card79 imagines an accompanying app that would have you picture your hand drawing letters of the alphabet. This idea is also based upon active research.
In some of their more future-forward concepts, Card79 imagines that kinesthetics could be a two-way street, allowing someone to download a new handwriting font or the choreography needed to wrap a gift perfectly—and then instantly have that new skill beamed via their brain to their hands. The logic is reminiscent of how the character Neo learned kung fu in The Matrix. But without all the shiny leather and sunglasses, the possibility seems far more practical (and mundane).
Of course, that sounds pretty overwhelming to me—as if a computer is suddenly standing in the way of every thought and impulse I have. Mehin isn’t pretending that his firm has figured out how BCI should work; he just believes these provocations will start necessary conversations so that, if and when we do develop mature mind-reading technology, design is in place to protect us and maintain our joy, rationality, and sense of self.
“It’s always dangerous to go on this path because the real opportunity where people are benefiting are patients with full-bodied paralysis. It’s going to potentially shift their entire lifestyle,” says Mehin. “Encouraging this work and fostering it for that population is super important, but it’s hard to tell where all this stuff is going to go [next].”
Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the early-rate deadline, May 3.
