Did you know that the origins of Bluetooth date back more than a thousand years? Not the technology, to be clear…but the nomenclature. The name for Bluetooth technology comes from King Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson. Gormsson was famous in Scandinavian history for bringing people together, uniting Denmark and Norway in the year 958. (There seems to be a little more gray area [sorry, color pun unintended] around whether his nickname actually comes from the color of his tooth.) The developers of the short-range technology that was going to connect products and industries intended to use “Bluetooth” only as a temporary code name, but it ended up becoming widespread before it was changed.
Bluetooth is, of course, how many of us connect accessories to our devices, whether that’s headphones or keyboards or gaming controllers. But it is playing a major role in the way some companies are approaching brain-computer interfaces, or BCI, that can help people with paralysis control digital devices using only their thoughts.
Synchron’s successes
A number of companies are working on BCI technology. No one is at a point yet where they have been approved to sell a BCI, but many are in some form of a trial stage. One company, Synchron, was in the news recently because one of its users became the first person to use Amazon’s Alexa with an implanted BCI.
The 64-year-old man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is one of six people in the United States and four in Australia taking part in a clinical trial. He received his BCI in August of 2023, and could already use it to operate his iPhone, iPad, and computer in order to use the internet or complete tasks such as write e-mails. The fact that he can now also control his Alexa makes more activities available to him without needing to rely on his voice.
The devices connect to the man’s BCI using Bluetooth. Most of the companies working to develop BCIs have advanced to the clinical trial stage because of the technology’s potential to improve the quality of life for the millions of people living with paralysis. But as with any new technology, especially the ones that access data, there is also the potential for controversy.
Possible pitfalls
One of the companies, Neuralink, is owned by Elon Musk and he has said his end goal is to use the tool to merge human brains with the advances made in artificial intelligence. Vox reports the company pushed for a more invasive and potentially dangerous approach to implants to advance that goal.
There are privacy concerns when it comes to sciences that come so close to the brain and other potential uses of BCI technology. In China, the government uses caps that scan some workers’ brainwaves to measure emotional states. The U.S. military has designs on using neurotechnology to help possibly make soldiers more alert for duty. Police departments around the world are looking into “brain fingerprinting” technology, which in theory could use brain responses during interrogations to tell whether a suspect recognizes certain aspects that could implicate them in a crime. Though it is already used in some places, it is not a scientifically sound method. People who study neuroethics believe new laws around human rights need to be developed before the technology goes any further.
As BCI technology proves, technology can present challenges and ethical gray areas. The process of collecting – and then using – data can be extremely difficult. But it doesn’t have to be. With the right analytics solution, your data can work for you to bring your organization the information it needs for informed decision-making. With so many different technological possibilities involved in gathering the data, one important feature to look for is flexibility. You want a solution that will bring together data from disparate sources to produce reports that will benefit everyone across the organization, ultimately helping your business succeed.
We’ll end where we began: with some Bluetooth trivia. Did you know that the Bluetooth symbol is actually the combination of runes representing Harald Bluetooth’s initials? Someday, if BCI technology becomes widespread, that could be a fact that you could look up on a device without touching that device. For now, though, rest assured that no matter how trivial your data, you can access it just as easily with the right analytics solution.
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