FUTURE HUMAN
A New Device Can Hear Your Thoughts
A 24-year-old MIT student has developed wearable tech he can control with his mind. The question is what we’ll do with it.
In early April, MIT research assistant Arnav Kapur, 24, uploaded a short video on YouTube. The clip showed him moving around campus in various settings wearing a white plastic contraption wrapped around the right side of his face.
As he walked by rows of bikes parked next to mounds of melting snow, his lips were closed while his inner thoughts flashed as words on the screen. “Time?” it read. A male voice responded, “10:35 a.m.” In the next scene, Kapur was shopping in a bodega. The prices of the things he tossed into his shopping cart — toilet paper, an Italian wrap, canned peaches — appeared on the screen. “Total $10.07,” the male voice responded. In the final scene, Kapur moved a cursor around a video console, ostensibly with his mind.
Kapur came to MIT’s Media Lab from New Delhi in 2016 to build wearable devices that…
