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by quantics 2351 days ago
I disagree. Even if you could record only a couple of bits (essentially being able to click with your mind), wouldn't this be useful already?
2 comments

If you still need to point to right area of the screen using trackpad or mouse, and can only perform the click event with your mind, I can't see how is that useful.
This is assuming you are operating a computer and not any other kind of machine. It would be very easy to assign multiple actions to different click patterns. For example, while driving:

- Click once to skip to next song - Click twice to go back to previous song - Click thrice to pause

While using any kind of industrial machine:

- Click once to emergency stop

While doing anything that involves both hands:

- Click once to perform an auxiliary action

Being able to click without having to physically perform anything can significantly reduce reaction time. If this system can be made reliable, there are a ton of dangerous or complex jobs that can be simplified and made safer with this technology.

>there are a ton of dangerous or complex jobs that can be simplified and made safer with this technology.

Honestly, this is a good point. However, just to play a devils advocate, for emergency situations you don't need a real-time brain computer. You can just measure the adrenaline level or heartbeat rate (which is trivially easy with present tech) and on once it jumps, you shut down the whole machinery.

My point being, complicated brain link is not needed to send what is, essentially, a "SOS" signal.

One use case: When I had a bad case of RSI, I got foot pedals to use as mouse buttons because clicking the mouse was painful.
Maybe not by itself, but maybe useful in conjunction with eye tracking?
But eye tracking is a huge problem in itself, and, to my knowledge, it's not solved at all. I type this as I sit in front of my "15 notebook, and I need barely move my eyes to see the whole screen.

I think that figuring out where exactly I look on my screen is impossible problem to solve, since I always clearly see at least 3/4 of the whole screen. You can only guess where exactly on this 3/4 property of my screen I'm really focused.

I have tested several eye tracking solutions on VR platforms, including Tobii and FOVE. Both solutions worked well enough for me to play games at the same speed I would with other control methods. Although it may be that eye tracking from that close of a distance works better than from a laptop screen distance, I haven't tried the Tobii laptop eye tracking solution so I can't say.
I don't think you're actually disagreeing with me; you're saying that something is possible with a low bitrate. Are the most interesting use cases possible? Probably not.