For years, futurists have dreamed of machines that can read minds, then act on instructions as they are thought. Now, human trials are set to begin on a brain-computer interface involving implants. Cyberkinetics of Foxboro, Massachusetts, has received approval to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimetre chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralysed patients.
Show us the profits, the skeptics shout. Nanotechnology will amount to nanoprofits, they worry as they tick off a list of technologies from artificial intelligence to virtual reality that looked cool in the lab but have foundered commercially.
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/ 28 January 2003
A lot of people are watching Miguel de Icaza, a bubbly young Mexican programming whiz behind an unusual project he named ”Mono,” Spanish for monkey.