Replicators, Holodecks and, Now, Avatars Controlled by Brainwaves

June has already been a month of spectacular breakthroughs in science, spanning from the creation of honest-to-god replicators to prototypes of holodecks. Well, we just hit another major breakthrough. On June 2nd, it was reported that for the first time, scientists enabled a paralyzed man to walk. For years, science fiction has delved into the idea of humans being capable of interfacing with machines using little more than their brainwaves. Logged into the virtual world of Second Life– a sim to end all sims that sports everything from shopping malls to a ‘living’ online ecosystem– a 41 year old man with a degenerative muscle disease was rigged up to do just that. Fitted with headgear that employed the use of three electrodes ‘listening in’ for brainwaves related to hand and leg motions, the man merely used his imagination and his avatar on-screen began to walk.

Second Life’s Svarga Sim; an ever-changing ecosystem in cyberspace capable of evolving.

Between this, the iLIMB and recent breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s medications, the far-fetched predictions of futurists that speak of prolonging human life indefinitely don’t seem quite so unattainable. Even disregarding the medical implications of this new technology— the ability to maneuver a character in a computer sim using only your imagination— the implications for gaming and other sources of entertainment are simply breathtaking.

Already, the gaming industry is going through some technological advancements of its own; ones that are beginning to raise surreal questions such as ‘is it ethical to program a computer sim to feel pain?’ And to think, no more than twenty years ago, the question would have been ‘what exactly IS a sim, anyway?’