The F8 conference rages on and yesterday, Regina Dugan, the head of Facebook’s experimental technologies unit, Building 8, revealed that the company is developing a brain-computer interface that allows people to think-to-type at 100 words per minute.
Oh, and also technology that lets the skin on your body mimic the function of an eardrum — so deaf people can hear without their ears.
It’s all part of their 10-year Roadmap
Hmm, not quite as catchy as the “Master Plan,” but it’ll play. At last year’s F8, Mark Z. unveiled a single, 3-stage PowerPoint slide outlining their strategy for the next decade. The highlights read as follows:
Year 3: Facebook
Year 5: Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram
Year 10: Terrestrial solutions, drones, lasers, artificial reasoning, social VR
Ok, year 3, check. Year 5, looking solid…
Year 10… seems like a bit of a leap
But hey, if Mark can dream it, he can do it.
Building 8’s only been around for a year but they already have deals to collaborate with slew of hospitals, as well Stanford, Harvard, and MIT.
So, while all of this may sound a little far-out, as Dugan put it, “it’s closer than you think.”
