'Things to Come' Part II:

Welcome to Part II in this weeks feature ‘Things to Come.’ Yesterday I talked about a device that could provide a voice for the voiceless: the nerve-signal interpreting neckband developed by Ambient Corporation. At the end of the article I was relating the potential applications of the device, hinting that it reached beyond helping those with ALS. And while I’m not trying to downplay the significant achievement in this application alone, the devices marketable applications might leave you wanting, what with a device that can read nerve signals as words.

One question you may be asking yourself is what does my inner voice sound like? Well, the technology is a little bit like text-to-speech; it interprets nerve signals, converts them to words, and then a synthesizer speaks the words aloud. Cursory applications of such a device beyond helping those with the inability to vocalize their thoughts include cellular communication within an environment where it would be inappropriate to speak aloud, such as a meeting or the movie theater. However, the most astounding application of this technology reaches far beyond merely dialing up Pizza Pizza while you're in the middle of a movie.

And rest assured, the people over at Ambient Corporation have recognized the startling potential of such a device, something they have packaged in the scenario called ‘The Smartest Man in the Room.’ As put forward by Michael Callahan (co-founder of Ambient Corporation) in a recent conference the smartest man in the room is one who, via the nerve-signal interpreting neckband, communicates with various websites via voiceless messaging. Consider banter at a bar, where several of your friends are trying to solve a debate. You then ask the question or the word you want defined through the voiceless system. It then queries the internet with those criteria and returns the answers via a voice synthesizer that broadcasts through an earpiece.

Be sure to come back tomorrow for the conclusion of the series, in which I’ll discuss the practical, and eerily enticing, applications of this technology. Plus: footage of Ambient Corporation's nerve-signal reading neckband in action at a Texas Instruments Conference.

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