Subconscious Thought Patterns & Digital Systems Design

How we can design digital systems safely and responsibly.

The concept of technology capable of reading minds is, quite frankly, terrifying. Even so, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) — devices offering a direct line of communication between a brain and a computer — are being developed by companies like Facebook and Elon Musk’s Neuralink. In other words, they can read minds. They can decode brain activity to work out what someone is trying to say, translating that data into audible sentences. They can even connect multiple brains, permitting them to play a Tetris-style video game together using something close to telepathy.

Until recently, this technology was far from mainstream adoption, but “Braintalker” — a new Brain-Computer Codec Chip (BC3) developed in China — might bring it one step closer. The chip may make the technology more portable and wearable, meaning it could finally come out of labs and into the mainstream.

As scary as this seems, it reminds me of something I worked on a decade ago. In 2009, at the International Design Consultancy agency I founded in London (Formerly called Foviance, now EY-Seren), we worked on a mash-up of technologies designed to enhance our user research. We didn’t quite want to read minds, but we did want to get inside the heads…