Here is a great article from Rolling Stone by Paul Krugman on the great inequality of wealth in our country.  It’s scary how unequal the wealth distribution in our county has become and how much Bush has been able to widen it and institutionalize it.  The problem is, if it continues, it could be pretty crippling to our country.  Already our country is one of the worst in the world to try to achieve the “American Dream”, that is, making it rich after being born poor here is harder than almost anywhere else in the world.

Hitachi is reported to be releasing a mind machine interface some time within the next 5 years. Their device uses topographical imaging of bloodflow in the brain. It probably only be able to determine the difference between a couple brain states. So it could be used to detect simple yes/no type decisions. I’m not sure what the use of this would be. I do believe that Mind Machine Interfaces will be a big part of our future, but this is not it. A Mind Machine interface needs to be able to obtain some useful information from the brain such as planned muscle movements or words or thoughts. For an MMI to be successful, it will probably also have to be non-invasive.

Any device that would be capable of extracting the type of information that I would think would be interesting would have to sense the brain on the neuronal level. One current example is the BrainGate device from CyberKinetics. The device uses an array of electrodes implanted in the motor cortex to sense which direction a subject wants to move their arm. This information can be used to move a cursor on the screen or move an artificial limb.  For most people the risk of having electrodes implanted in their brain vastly outweights the benefits of the mind machine interface.  We need to work on finding ways to sense neuronal level activities without the invasiveness of implanting electrodes in the brain.