Controller Masks with Sensorimotor Implants - Text 7
On 8 April 2021, the company posted a video of a monkey playing a simple video game, MindPong (inspired by the famous game Pong), by thought. Constantly rewarded by a dispenser of banana purée, the monkey moved the cursor across the screen using a controller, but once the system was calibrated, the monkey could activate the cursor solely by the intention of moving it.[2]
As the company has proudly announced,
The Link is a starting point for a new kind of brain interface. As our technology develops, we will be able to increase the channels of communication with the brain, accessing more brain areas and new kinds of neural information.[3]
And an illustration maps the vast territory to be conquered: the motor cortex, the visual cortex, the auditory cortex and the somatosensory cortex (which concerns touch and tactile and proprioceptive information).
As usual, the declared intentions are pure:
This technology has the potential to treat a wide range of neurological disorders, to restore sensory and movement function, and eventually to expand how we interact with each other, with the world, and with ourselves.[4]
According to Neuralink, these implants may enable people suffering from paralysis to remotely activate a keyboard, console, computer, telephone or robot by their cerebral activity alone, meaning to act without using their hands. But the implants may some day also enable everyone to feel and act in the world without their bodies.
Obviously, however, beneath these good intentions other interests are at work: the commercial potential of this research is enormous and its applications are boundless – and dizzying – in particular its bio-political and military applications. If it is possible to restore sight and hearing to people with a visual or auditory disability, and movement to people suffering from paralysis, it would surely be possible at the same time to control people’s actions and thoughts remotely. The implant The Link is already connected by Bluetooth to an iPhone to make it possible to interact with it, and the “Neuralink app,” which will make it possible to learn how to control one’s telephone remotely, could also make it possible to stimulate the brain from this same telephone. “Be in control,” “be autonomous,”[5] Neuralink states, without pointing out the dual constraint constituted by this imperative of freedom: controlling one’s autonomy presupposes submission to heteronomy. A mended and augmented human is also subject to surveillance and control. The direction of the current has a political dimension.
