Facebook shares brain-control ambitions

Brain-computer interface technology now involves implanting electrodes, but Facebook wants to use optical imaging to eliminate the need for invasive surgery, according to Dugan.

It is developing "silent speech" software to allow people to type at a rate of 100 words per minute, it says.

Dugan says that "no one has the right" to decode your silent thoughts, but the fact that's even something that has to be said says something scary about where technology is headed. Dugan is an ex-DARPA, Motorola and Google executive who Facebook hired previous year to lead Building 8.

The project grew from being an idea six months ago to being the focus of a team of more than 60 scientists, engineers, and system integrators, according to Dugan, who heads a Building 8 team devoted to coming up with innovative hardware for the social network's mission of connecting the world.

On his Facebook page, Mark Zuckerberg added: "Our brains produce enough data to stream four HD movies every second".

Facebook Inc.'s research lab Building 8 is working to make it possible for people to type using signals from their brains, part of the lab's broader effort to free people from their phones.

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"I suggest that one day, not so far away, it may be possible for me to think in Mandarin and for you to feel it instantly in Spanish". To achieve sophisticated brain control with today's technology requires the implanting of a computer chip into the brain, something Ms Dugan joked "simply won't scale".

Firing off emails while knitting or playing with your kids is only the first step.

Details were relatively scant as to what this would really look like, though a Stanford University experiment Dugan referenced relied on "an array of electrodes the size of a pea" implanted inside the subject's brain.

"You have many thoughts, you choose to share some of them". Dugan showed a video of an early test where a Facebook engineer wore a special sleeve containing a system of actuators. It sounds like the technology won't quite enable someone to "hear" a word, but to feel a vibration associated with it, which they can over time learn to understand.

"Imagine the power that would give to the 700 million people who cannot read or write but can surely think and feel", Dugan said.