a headset that reads your brainwaves

lol. going for a cheap lol on my part.

peace between us, good man.

I knew this technology was coming, just wait and we'll have full immersion in VR worlds.

VR is off in a whole other direction really (although BCI will combine with it like it will with everything else). A thing that's interesting about BCI is that its a legitimate route to some sort of singularity/intelligence explosion all on its own. We don't necessarily have to create artificial general intelligence for there to be a singularity, the merging of humans with machines and eachother could do the trick and there are plenty of people that think this is the most likely route these days.

To the people who think this technology could lead to thinking of music and having it composed in real time:

How do you think that's going to work? Like you think C3, and tell the computer to associate that brain-pattern with C3, and do so with every other note? And have another thought for snare?

You wouldn't be able to really create new tones or sounds based on the tones and sounds you're thinking of. With the technology in this video, you could only have your thoughts trigger sounds that you've already programmed into it. So it wouldn't be as mind-blowing as some of you are making it seem.

well, to be honest, i'm not all that serious about the music thing, but if you can imagine a cube disappearing, don't you think you could sit down and have it calibrate for a while as you concentrate on certain notes or sounds? obviously not everyone can do this, but there are people in the world with a sense of incredible pitch (i am not among them). hell, you even calibrate that thing with shape notes or some other more visually oriented way of imagining tunes. who knows.

originally i was just thinking of triggering midi controllers though (or their futuristic equivalent, whatever that may be). i don't really have the answers for how that would all go down, but it seems like a fun idea anyway.

From what I gleaned on the video, it can only make a cube disappear because she programed the program they are running is programmed to make the cube disappear. The mind only triggered it.

The point I'm trying to make is that I don't think you could use this to think music and have a wave file come out. You could use this to make a reverb unit, or change the tempo, or something like that. It would be like a mouse, not a mind to audio converter.

i think we're pretty much on the same page. =]

agree with that. I think it will be unbelievably difficult to do that sort of thing (intentionally creating custom tones etc) and we are probably more likely to stumble into bizarre new ways of composing than to create music that way. Controlling a standard synth and maybe even manipulating a parameter or 2 all in real time is way feasible though.

Going back to combining VR + BCI, i think creating entire virtual worlds with your mind by visualisation would be surprisingly easier than generally thought though. We can already do very simple visualisations like a single letter or a really clear shape and produce a pretty accurate image of it on a computer screen.