Protecting Our Brains From Datamining 100
Jason Koebler writes: 'Brainwave-tracking is becoming increasingly common in the consumer market, with the gaming industry at the forefront of the trend. "Neurogames" use brain-computer interfaces and electroencephalographic (EEG) gadgets like the Emotiv headset to read brain signals and map them to in-game actions. EEG data is "high-dimensional," meaning a single signal can reveal a lot of information about you: if you have a mental illness, are prone to addiction, your emotions, mood, and taste. If that data from gaming was collected and mined, it could theoretically be matched with other datasets culled from online data mining to create a complete profile of an individual that goes far beyond what they divulge through social media posts and emails alone. That's led some to develop privacy systems that protect your thoughts from hackers.'
Increasingly common? (Score:2, Interesting)
Is it really? Or is it a click-bait headline that really means here's a couple of companies who have a product which does it but nobody else does?
Re:Increasingly common? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree, to an extent. These devices are hardly going to read minds in the sense of providing all of that detail.
However, whatever they lose in quality (of resolution), they may make up for in quantity. A poor quality device may still be able to provide some useful data points when applied to a larger group of people. Put some branding or situations inside a game, monitor for coarse grained interest or emotion, and you might have something useful to marketers or game designers. Or not.
When things like this start approaching mass markets, people start thinking of other uses for the data. Working in a field where people are spending good money trying to vacuum up all the data on the Internet, even shitty Facebook posts, I see first hand how people get excited over any new data point. Most of it is crap, but there's some gold in there, for sure.
Click-bait, but still interesting to consider.