Awesome.   B"H   This offers such promise, and I am greatly encouraged.  But, like all tools, care is necessary.  A knife be used by a murderer to torture and kill people.  But sharpened and used as a scapel, in the hands of a DOC, that same knife can help heal the wounded, ill, diseased, and damaged, even save lives. And this new tech seems to hold such promise to help so many people!  Dr Stephen Hawking, oh to see what he might have done with this technology!  A wonderful promise of a better future for so many people. 

What interests me about this technology is that it seems all but impossible to misuse in its current state: the device is too clunky to put on someone without their knowing it, and although of course I haven't used the thing myself I understand that it's not as simple as thinking about something and causing it to appear on a screen (i.e. the machine can't read your thoughts).

Its kinda like this. The computer can't 'read' your thoughts...no. What it does is interpret the electrical activity associated with certain brain functions, i.e. thought processes and compares them with known variables programmed into it. There are approximately 6 1/2 billion people on the planet and no two are alike. These are the kind of variables the computer must deal with. Each one of the variables, an individual, has how many neurons in his/her brain? Trillions perhaps. There's a long road ahead.

Reminds me of the Clint Eastwood movie, Firefox. It was a super secret Russian fighter aircraft with a computer that was controlled by an neural interface through the flight helmet, boring movie up till the last 30 or so minutes.....

Which was inspired by the MiG25 Foxbat which had the west panicking as it was assumed to be an air superiority fighter when it was infact an Interceptor design to counter the SR71 and XB70 'threats'.

Wee bit OT...

Oh what about the movie 'Surrogates!?? This technology is perfectly in the right direction!!!

I cannot say that level of technology in the movie Surrogates would not be absolutely awesome to try out!! but like without the overkill they did in the movie. (and yes of course I'm thinking how easy it would be to 'score')

I would like to see it advanced as DrJBHL said but I can't help thinking what certain others might try to do with it. Always there is this question, which really makes me sick, can it used as a weapon? I wonder who might ask that.

Just about everyone will be asking that when the day is due, I fear. In fact, given the military's spending on equipment, isn't it likely that that's where we will see it first? Expensive drones are already used in tactical scenarios. AND there's a legitimate "reason" to spend millions of dollars on the toys - you're not against THE TROOPS are you? AMERICAN LIVES ARE AT STAKE.

Meanwhile, on the homefront, insurances will fail to cover such extravagances and ironically, the wounded men and women who were fighting those long bloody wars will be the ones lacking the necessity they got replaced by.

End of rant. Now I'm off to play some more America's Army.

I'd bet on health care and military... follow the money. However, military usage might not be nefarious. It might just enable people to multitask in noisy environments.

I'm not speaking about unethical usage, still, it might prevent torture as an interrogation technique. For example, the ticking bomb scenario (an imminent attack). Of course, that could be at anytime, so it would inevitably be used as an excuse to use such a device.

However, it would be way in the future that any such undertaking could occur because one would still have to translate all thoughts, and what if the person simply doesn't think about it? As the device and software are at present, they require volition as well as training (I believe) to use.

As for the law, the 5th Amendment would still hold true for those it applies to so self incrimination wouldn't really become an issue, nor anything arising from such an interrogation technique (fruit of the poisoned tree), as well as 4th Amendment illegal search and seizure issues.

The really sticky part would be usage in the workplace: "You wish to apply for a job? Just put this on your head while we talk." That type of usage would have to be made strictly illegal.

I still wish only to look at the brighter side - the way such a device could change so many lives for the better. 

I could see a scenario where it actually poses a problem, though, as opposed to just allowing them to, I don't know, mail me even more demographically-inaccurate recruiting ads (They obviously have my personal information, because this stuff comes with my name on it, but for whatever reason they don't realize I'm medically ineligible to fight....).

The problem is somewhat similar to the concept in the "Firefox" movie mentioned above: these things get put into fighter helmets to give the pilots faster reaction times. The problem I see with that is that once those mental responses become relfex, just having to think about shooting to do it could make the boys "twitchy", and more likely to fire before realizing that the people on the ground are, in fact, civilians.

It is stories like this that makes me wonder if we will be the skinless mutants of "Beneath the Planet of The Apes" or the Buck Rogers of the future.  It is a race to see which develops first, rockets or the interfaces!  But both at the same time will be dangerous if we are not careful (the Forbidden Planet).

Even if we were the ones attacked? Becoming more efficient at defense might indeed make it more lethal for an attacker... which is ok in my book. War isn't a great solution or even a good one... just the only one at times, it seems.

Wish there were a way to dissuade folks from going down that path.

I'd love to see this type of technology used for people who don't have the use of their limbs, or suffer the nightmare-fuel "locked in" syndrome.

As for defence, I like sleeping at night know the boys and girls keeping me safe have the best tools of the trade at their disposal.  However, there is a line there, as whatever they have to defend me can be used to keep me quiet should the situation arise.  Mind controlled death machines crosses that line.

I'm very happy this technology is being developed, and may help many people increase their access to the world around them.  I still can't help but contiinuing imagining what Dr Hawkins would have done had he had accesss to this new technology.  How many others, who have been 'trapped' in their body's mal-functioning semi-cage will now have so much more freedom.  And the benefits of the freedom will be just for the user - as some will make great contributions for the benefit of us all.   Whats not to like?