One of the unique features of ancient Hindu mythology is the tendency for all gods and goddess’ to wear elaborate head gears. Generally this manifests as helmet shaped crowns. They are tightly shaped cones covering almost the entire head while leaving the face open. I have always been fascinated by them because I have found them almost exclusively in Hinduism. They separate the gods from mortals though many kings are shown wearing such crowns. But I think the prehistoric kings who are shown to wear them are out of tradition. The actual crowns found in museums which were worn by the kings are much simpler affairs and look surprisingly similar to those worn by other kings around the world.
Hindus in general like to hang large calendars and posters or gods and goddesses around the house. Its part of our culture. Unlike other religions in our region, Hindus are encouraged to represent their gods pictorially as much as possible. I have seen paintings of gods from around the country and these crowns are similarly represented even in people with different culture and languages through out India.
Why am I discussing all this under a technical heading?
Recently while surfing I came across a new development attempting to interface the computer to the human mind. I’ll be providing a link to that site at the end of this entry. I found that liberating since I am of the opinion that high technology did exist before many thousands of years ago and through some calamity, accidental or intentional, it was lost for all times. Hindu scriptures abound with fantastic and detailed descriptions of flying crafts from other worlds, thought controlled weapons of mass destruction, harnessing of energy in ways we can barely imagine. These scriptures are full of instances of time and space manipulation even by mortals. Recent concepts like gravity, atoms and gene mutations are mentioned in mythical lore handed down by word of mouth for thousands of years.
I didn’t think it was possible to interface electronics with our own brain but I guess I was wrong. I don’t mean that they have devised a helmet like head gear which hooks up to the PC. The technology is still very new and under development but at least now I know its possible. It may take decades before something useful comes out of this research but it exists fundamentally. Now all that remains is to develop it further till it becomes something practical enough for us to use. Basically efficient enough to replace our present interfaces like keyboard and mouse.
Voice controlled systems do exist already but they are not very popular because they are not really more efficient than the controls we already use. While voice dictation is faster than typing, the errors because of accents and inflections make it impractical as a substitute. This does not have to be the case with something connected directly to the brain since those will be pure thoughts unencumbered by tongue or throat peculiarities. The margin of errors should reduces along similar lines as between early analog and current digital audio. Technically our vocal cords are complex transducers as are the microphones which convert those vibrations to electrical signals. And when a signal from one transducer is fed to another the noise and errors pile up pretty fast. It would not be so if both these transducers were removed from the equation. We would get pure error free communication.
Here’s a link: BCI Project
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