Input text directly from your brain

Tired of that mouse? Disappointed with your keyboard? Wouldn't you like to just shoot those words onto the screen with the power of your brain?

Well, we're about 5 years away from that thanks to Guger Technologies and their Intendix, which introduced its first brain-computer interface at CES this week.

The Intendix device is pricey, about $12,000, it's limited to basic text input, and it's designed for people who can't communicate any other way. But with training a user can input a letter per second, enough to carry on a conversation and even write a blog.

Best of all, there's the miracle known as Moore's Law. Think of what happened with HDTV. What was a $10,000 device a few years ago is now cheap as chips, startling the burglars who take them from suburban homes and find there's no longer a market for them.

Within five years, something like this will be available at popular prices.

Physically the device looks like one of those bathing caps Esther Williams wore in her movies, covered in sensors designed to pick up EEG waves. It will take software to adapt it for uses beyond text, to Web browsing and opening browser windows and letting someone replace me here at SmartPlanet.

But the first steps have been taken.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com