Ok, I should have said "healthy human".
The stroke victims have nothing to lose and its still pretty experimental.

There is a big risk of infection with this type of procedure, and its nothing you just do and go home, it's done under close medical surveilance.

It's an interesting discussion, but I'm confused that you think you have some revolutionary "idea" that simply needs money to invest.

I don't consider it to be a revolutionary idea. I'm currently taking a humanities class at college and the book has given many examples of how technology does not progress without a demand. Entrepreneurs are the people who take a chance to market and sell a technology to consumers. This creates a demand for the technology and thereby does more to advances the technology then anything else.

I'm currently taking a humanities class at college and the book has given many examples of how technology does not progress without a demand.

Paralysis victims, prosthetics limbs, remote control vehicles for emergency/military use - the list of things that would obviously benefit from mind/machine integration is endless.

Entrepreneurs are the people who take a chance to market and sell a technology to consumers.[/quote]
OCZ, Cyberkinetics, Emotiv, XWave... There are already a metric ton of entrepreneurs selling early mind/machine interfaces to consumers.

This creates a demand for the technology and thereby does more to advances the technology then anything else.[/quote]
Consumer spending rarely offers the kind of incentive to develop technologies that the military, NASA, or academia would.

Consumers are only willing to pay for working technology, that they can go out and buy from the store. But the Pentagon, NASA, or even MIT will fund the development of your prototype, if you can convince them it's worth their while...

[quote name='slayemin' timestamp='1328956523' post='4911930']
Ignoring all of the moral, technical, medical and legal difficulties this would create... imagine what it would be like to visit a website, which as part of its load process, scans your thoughts to generate advertising tailored specifically for you. And, as you view the advertisement and start to think about it, the advertisement changes its salespitch to dynamically follow your thought processes to make it more compelling. It'd be like the most compelling and suggestively hypnotic advert you've ever seen. And, the purchasing process can be streamlined since you'd only have to mentally authorize the purchase and the software would pull your credit card data from a database or your mind. Before you know it, you're putting in an order for twenty three cases of viagra and cailis even though you're a young healthy man. Single? No problem, the company has a partnership with your local escort service. Ugh... present the technology and capitalism will find a way to exploit it to the max.

I disagree that because it could be implemented badly, the entire concept is bad.

Doing it that way would be particularly stupid. Even with computers now, connecting to a website doesn't allow that website full access to my computer. (Although sure, it is a valid worry to be concerned about security flaws in such a device.) The obvious way to do this is not to allow random websites direct access at all, instead it's an interface that allows you control something that passes the more traditional kind of information.[/quote]
Today, websites try their best to figure out who you are so that they can target advertisements to you. I don't think it would be as blatant as how I described, but it would probably happen. It would be bundled with something you want so you'd be more willing to consent as a condition for getting your goodies. My point is that if you provide the means, the marketers will figure out how to use it to the max and I'm warning that we may not necessarily like the end result.

Or even worse, what if a authoritarian/totalitarian regime got a hold of the technology and mandated that all of its citizens got the necessary surgeries to get a direct neural connection? There wouldn't be a personal choice on whether you wanted to have a hole drilled into your head. It'd be forced on you, and if you refused, you'd be labeled as an enemy of the state.[/quote]I'm sure that we could argue against most modern technology, if we're allowed to argue "But what if a totalitarian regime used this technology to do X". (I mean yes, I think this would be an argument against say, if a Government said it needed to mind read all citizens to detech crimes, but I don't think it works against the mere existence of technology.)[/quote]
I suppose you're right. Just about any technology could be used to oppress people. But, some tools are much more effective at it than others. The potential impact of mind scanning by an oppressive regime would be quite profound. You'd literally have the thought police.

There's a reason why DARPA is funding this kind of technology:[/quote]If it's being funded anyway, then is it good that only the Governments/military have the technology?[/quote] The fact is, warfare is getting more and more lethal. Today, an Apache helicopter pilot can shoot his 30mm gun at human beings 5 miles away in the middle of the night and kill them all before they know what hit them. Should we keep improving our weapons of war so that we can kill more people faster and with less risk to ourselves? It's a moral question and I'm of the opinion that there are better areas to focus our efforts than the perfection of human slaughter. We may even find ourselves on the receiving end of our creations. So, we'd better get some world peace going on real soon or we may just have the peaceful silence of a cratered moonscape.

Today, websites try their best to figure out who you are so that they can target advertisements to you. I don't think it would be as blatant as how I described, but it would probably happen. It would be bundled with something you want so you'd be more willing to consent as a condition for getting your goodies. My point is that if you provide the means, the marketers will figure out how to use it to the max and I'm warning that we may not necessarily like the end result.

I think it should be possible to design it so that such a thing is impossible.

E.g., I believe there's already experimental devices allowing people to control mouse/keyboard via thought. If they then access a website, they're able to access a website by using their thoughts - but there's absolutely no way for the website to read their thoughts, other than what's already possible with someone using a keyboard/mouse with their hands.

More generally, you have a device which issues instructions to the computer, which in turn can control software including a web browser, but at no point does there have to be an "upload what this person is thinking" API. Although yes, I guess there are conceivable possibilities such as the control software getting hacked by a virus...