NeuraFutures

Last page edit: April 9, 2024.

Building on 15 years of our experience in designing and creating the most cutting edge interaction – fusion between the brain and computer, brain-computer interface, in our project NeuraFutures we are touching upon implanting memories, reading your dreams while you sleep and communicating a thought between two different people throughout the continents.

We analyzed 500+ books, movies, TV shows to give our audience a better picture of what brain computer interfaces are and are not. From science to science fiction, from 1641’s brain in a jar to 2021’s Rick and Morty’s memory transfer helmet.

We explore together with our audience the multitude of scenarios, use cases, form-factors of some of the most futuristic systems imagined by humans over the past 500 years to establish how close we are to those systems and try to answer THAT VERY IMPORTANT question - if you really need to get that implant tomorrow.

Click Here to check the dedicated website of NeuraFutures Project

We designed an immersive art installation based on these ideas and our data, which is currently open to the general public at Cambridge Public Library: for our installation, we ask the attendees to face these senses and awaken themselves to their own sociotechnological morals.

We have fabricated 35 real-size physical prototypes, or props, of the neural devices featured in different BCI-fi, each of which represents different permutations of answers to these senses and morals — essentially, different futures. These props are organized around the space, and this space is open for exploration. The public is also be able to take a “FuturesTest” in which they make a series of choices about the future they hope or predict to see, the results of which will be the prop in the space that is the most representative of their morals. The test will require users to consider new aspects of their identity and understand the ethics of AI and human-enhancement by asking questions about utopian vs. dystopian worlds, invasive vs. non-invasive technologies, and when they believe different neuratechnological events will happen. You may also take this test.

FUTURES TEST

After the test, a unique card is offered to the participant with these results, and the participant is encouraged to also insert a token into the “bank” associated with their preferred prop. In this way, over time, we are able to see which props — which futures — are the most popular ones, and hence how the public as a whole tends to predict/understand the future and which kinds of media/devices have the most influence on the public.

Some of the props are also fitted with real EEG sensors, and users are able to try those on and play with. We were also running demos of the interaction, which included live testing by any person who were present at the installation: controlling a small robot using their brain activity.

This experience highlights the paradox that humans are willing to exchange their own data, their identity, for social and emotional comfort. We often use technology to blend in, have fun, and stay up to date, but in this case, we have to expose the most intimate level of our identities, our biodata, to do so. Data privacy is not only a common theme in sci-fi but is incredibly relevant in society today, as biodata is becoming more and more accessible to the corporate world; we want to use the installation to expose—awaken—users, in the hopes that it sparks more action toward enacting proper biotechnological legislation. We asked at the end of the experience that users reflect on the data that they gave up for their entertainment and mental growth, and consider whether preserving or growing identity is more valuable to the advancement of humanity.