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.
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…
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.”