My correspondent, Concerned Sydneysider, sent me information that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, is developing interface brain technology, and testing it on “Primates” – and he doesn’t mean religious ones in dog collars, at this stage, anyway! Bob Pritchard reports on this research (of which he approves) part of which we re-print below. Bob is an Australian business journalist and advisor, who lives in Los Angeles.

“Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg have donated $5 billion, that is 5000 million dollars, for an ambitious biomedical-research program called the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative with a goal of curing all disease within a generation.

Related to the CZI is the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub, which employs top-notch scientists from Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and UC San Francisco. Researchers are studying a wireless implantable brain device, called the “Wand”.  This is a $5 billion program which includes work on brain-machine interfaces, devices that essentially translate thoughts into commands.

In a paper published in the highly cited scientific journal Nature on New Year’s Eve, researchers detail a wireless brain device implanted in a primate that records, stimulates, and modifies its brain activity in real time, sensing a normal movement and stopping it immediately.

Scientists refer to the interference as “therapy” because it is designed to be used to treat diseases like epilepsy or Parkinson’s by stopping a seizure or other disruptive motion as it starts. The device is able to monitor the brain while it’s providing the therapy, identifying exactly what’s happening.

The applications of brain-machine interfaces are far-reaching: While some researchers focus on using them to help assist people with spinal-cord injuries or other illnesses that affect movement, others aim to see them transform how everyone interacts with laptops and smartphones.

Both a secret division at Facebook as well as an Elon Musk-founded company, called Neuralink, are also working on the latter.  Facebook’s secret hardware group made an armband that transformed words into understandable vibrations and lets you ‘hear’ through your skin, a key part of the company’s bigger plan to embed computers in our bodies.

The brain device they call the “Wand” changes behavior automatically.  Placed on top of the monkey’s head, the wireless, palm-sized device is connected directly to its brain and can record, stimulate, and modify its behavior in real time.”

Unlike Bob Pritchard, this monkey thinks such experiments are fraught with danger; they may well interfere with my apparent “natural” evolution. We can’t have that, can we?

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

The Thinking Primate

P.S. I wonder what the impact of this new technology could be on religious primates?