Unlike previous thought-communication devices, the system does not use surgical implants. Instead a skullcap peppered with electrodes monitors the electrical activity of its wearer's brain. Early trials using a steerable robot indicate that with just two days training it is as easy to control the robot with the human mind as it is manually.
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As it turned out, when I received this Thursday I was working on a sip and puff controlled chair with tilt, recline, and a portable respirator. This chair is more or less equivalent to Steve Reeve's chair. It was a new chair that had a weird controller problem. The chair stopped intermittently and had to be manually turned off, then turned on again to be driven. I had to have the guy go home, get taken out of his chair and have the chair brought back to the shop, so I could tilt the seat up in the air, pull off the respirator to get to the electronics, pull the electronics box, install another one, and re-program the new one to run like the old one (minus the faults). It took about two hours.
Since the electronics are sealed and all the programming is proprietary (on EPROMs), they are impossible to fix at the shop and have to be sent back to the manufacturer, Invacare (motto: we don't care, because we don't have to).
In effect, the shut-down controllers are like M$uck's OS without a reboot, so if they crash (a feature not a bug), the only way you can get them to work again is to send them back to the manufacturer to re-install the software system. They also run a few parameter checks of the components and then send the controller back, charging several hundred dollars for this service.
Soo, when I read about bio-engineered controllers using brain waves as the input, which should be a kewl thing, or at least interesting to consider, all that happens to my brain is a cloud of dread descends, my eyes go dark, and my pupils constrict into dots as my blood pressure goes through the roof while vast quantities of adrenaline, testosterone and ATP are released to amp every muscle in my body into a quivering rage ready to rip the first smarmy little fuck neoliberal free market twit I see, a brand new asshole---where his smug little smile used to be.
Now, I have to admit, that just about any stimulus, even a loud noise will accomplish pretty much the same response. But, some stimuli seem more equal to the task than others.... I am afraid, I am permanently wired to the pissed-off position---only one brain wave---cranked.
In my dark vision of the world, high tech developments which should be of human benefit will only succeed when somebody (the above mentioned and most hated neoliberal twit) figures out a way to screw humanity with it. Then it will succeed in direct proportion to the penetrating force of the screw job. That's the American Way.
Nevermind this particular brain wave device was designed in the UK. Invacare is multi-national. Its current controller and most of its interfaces were ripped off from other corporations and designers in New Zealand, Canada, UK, Germany (where most research into this kind of technology is state sponsored) and re-worked at Invacare, in Cleveland, OH. Of course the designs are all altered slightly to make them proprietory and then fabricated in Mexico and China (specifically to dodge EPA controls and labor unions).
Once a power chair and controller design are ready for production, they are de-tuned into a series of lesser tiered clones which correspond to the class system of healthcare benefits. This makes it so that the poor get the worst performing equipment, while the well do with full benefit coverage get the best performing equipment. This effectively reproduces the economic class system through an artificial distinction between equipment `quality' categories. It really does not cost significantly more to produce a good performing chair, over a crapy chair---since the crappy version is just a de-tuned version of the top end. Nevertheless, the equipment categories reflect not the manufacturing cost, but the likely socio-economic class of the recipient.
This artificial class system reflected in the artificially manipulated equipment-performance-cost scheme actually reflects the deep prejudices and bias of the manufacturer's target market, the rehabilitation `professionals', ie. therapists and DME sales. In other words the equipment categories are sold to the therapist who has fixed in his or her mind an entire world of expectations and limitations based on their appraisals of the disabled person's, disability, age, socio-economic class, race, and gender---more or less in that order. These are all intermixed with the benefit allowables for particular state and private insurance coverage in such a way as to re-enforce each other.
Let me put it this way. If you become disabled, you want to be young, white, well off, with some college, and from a supportive family. You do not want to be old, black, poor, with no family. If you are from the former, the `safety net' works okay and the equipment works okay. If you are from the latter, the `safety net' has holes so big you'll take a face plant on concrete most of the time. But your nightmares are not over, because you'll wake up to find a raving lunatic working on your piece of shit Medicare chair, throwing tools around, talking shit about the government....Oh, happy day...
Chuck Grimes