Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) are on the rise – a recent Nature paper covers an experiment where measures of thinking are used to separate out images. The BCI research community is gaining traction – keep an eye out for the BCI 2011 conference. BCI products and startup companies are springing up – for example Neurosky have an interesting commercial consumer orientation BCI headset, and a recent toy game from Mattel called MindFlex mixes up a basic BCI sensor with puzzle solving.

Unfamiliar with Human-Computer Interaction quantitative experiment design and statistical tests? Here’s a short introduction to statistics for HCI research. And yes R is great for calcs – though its usability is distinctly lacking. If you want to get serious about HCI stats and experiment design I recommend reading The Whole Art of Deduction. It’ll help you get familiar with Independent & Dependent Variables, Repeat Measures, Between Subjects, Within Subjects, etc, etc. Another handy link is this reference page, which helps you figure out which statistical test to use. Finally, CrossValidated is extremely useful Q&A website for asking and answering questions about specific stats techniques.

Do you think is Divvy a potentially useful user interface tweak for enhancing desktop window management?

Florian Kräutli has designed and created malleable magnetic curtains that retain their shape. Clunky elegance.

Embodied Cognition “is a growing research program in cognitive science that emphasizes the formative role the environment plays in the development of cognitive processes.” Learn more about this increasingly important area from this website. (via MindHacks)

Gimme gimme one of the Emotiv Brain-Computer Interface headsets. No contact gel required. Of course you could always build your own based on designs from the OpenEEG project.

Neat video of a time fountain optical illusion. Looks like water is running backward defying gravity and hanging in mid-air.

Are you a hacker (maker) or a painter? Or both? Or neither? Which of C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures do you belong to? Paul Graham’s essay on Hackers and Painters may be of interest.

Fascinating talk given by Professor Mark Reed from Yale talking about The Next Frontier: Bioelectronic Interfaces (video).

You can find out more about their research at the LEURRE project website, where they wrote about their work experimenting with Artificial Life Control in Mixed Societies.

Separately MIT’s Rodney Brooks and others have been speculating about controlling insects and other creatures via brain implants Can cyborg moths bring down terrorists?

There are also examples where social behaviours, such as altruism, occur in other species Ape Aid: Chimps share altruistic capacity with people.

Now imagine designing a living space, a house, where tiny robot (overlords) carry out constant pest control. Not pest control practiced in an aggressive kill-everything-that-isn’t-human manner. Instead take a subtle holistic approach, which may be more sustainable and environmentally sounder than spraying all kinds of chemicals into our living spaces.

Pest control could be carried out by having the robots exert peer pressure on the insects. Reshaping / redesigning the behaviour of the insects by fooling them into doing what we want, i.e. have a set of tiny ant robots create Follow Me trails that lead away from inside your house. Or get spiders with robotic brains to encourage other spiders to build webs around your porch light. So at night moths are snagged in spider webs rather than swarming into your house when you open the porch door.

There are lots of other possibilities of adapting / redesigning group behaviours by controlling and influencing a few individuals in a group. For example encourage swarms of fish to swim into waiting nets, or encourage animals to eat food waste from dumps so the waste gets “recycled naturally”.

Of course there are negative implications, such as potentially throwing the ecological balance out. Or it’d become possible to literally send a plague of locusts to attack your annoying neighbour’s farm.

Insects and their behaviours as design materials!?