I'm sitting in Ethics class right now, the professor is fervently saying something (I'm not catching all the words of course because I'm writing this) about virtue philosophy, and I am writing this post on a pocket-sized computer that yes, is about as fully functional as a regular-sized one and even has wireles internet access. As I write this I can't help but marvel at the technology I commonly use today. This computer I am using right now for example, is about 1 inch thick, 6 inches tall and 3.5 inches wide. I have an mp3 player that holds and organizes 600 songs that is about the size of a clothespin. What I consider normal today people 15-20 years ago would have only imagined could be on Star Trek. I like the age I live in. Oh, randomly, I read a blog the day and the author and his wife just named their baby daughter "Stellar Voxanne." Now there's a Star Trek name if I ever heard one! I hope they just call her Stella. It also kinda sounds like something the infamous scientology-pushing Tom Cruise might want to name a second daughter. He scares me.

If you think that is impressive, just wait, we’ll have much cooler things then they had on star trek. Scientists have been getting closer and closer to be able to interpret data from the brain over the past few years, and now we’re there. A few years ago they were able to directly connect monitoring devices to a monkey’s brain and the monkey was able to control a robotic arm just by thinking about what it wanted the arm to do. We already have technology that can read the electric impulses in the human brain very well. We still need to learn how to interpret this data better before it can replace a keyboard and mouse function completely, but we’re getting there. Recently a computer “game” was created where users could manipulate objects on the screen by thinking about them and other similar gaming devices are coming on the market now. The other thing that needs to happen is we need to miniaturize this technology further. We also have glasses that are currently marketed as a way to watch movies. When you wear them it appears you are looking at a large screen far away, rather than a small one less than an inch from your eye.

With those two things you have both an output device (the glasses) and an input device (your thoughts). The device to read your mind could be within the glasses. At first this would probably wirelessly connect to a computer that you’d keep in your pocket, but as computer components are miniaturized further the entire computer could be in a pair of “sunglasses”. And my guess is to avoid worrying about battery life; it will use your body heat to power the device while you wear them.