Full-Dive Technology, Brainstorming

[CraigD]

Okay so what about NeuroLinker from Accel World.

When I watched Accel World, I didn’t notice that it was written by Reki Kawahara, or guess that it was set later in the same fictional world as his Sword Art Online. It’s focus on the idea that a brain-computer interface could not connect a person to a computer, but, via a special piece of software (“BB2039.exe”) make them think many (about 960) time faster than normal, causing events in the real world to slow to a crawl in the perception of the user. I found this idea much more incredible than that a little neck-hugging gadget like the series’ ubiquitous Neuro Linker could be support immersive VR/AR.

 

Scientifically, I don’t think there’s any foundation to the idea that input from a BCI could make the brain work faster, perceiving the world as moving slower. The complicated processes that make the brain work can’t be sped up as simply as those that make a computer work can be. Unless our reality is actually being simulated by a computer – that is, the simulation hypothesis is correct – I don’t think the though acceleration depicted in Accel World is possible.

 

The idea of slowing down time in a virtual reality simulation is an old one – perhaps most famously “bullet time” in the 1999 movie The Matrix ability that allows characters to dodge bullets and other perform other amazing feats. After The Matrix, many video games included this idea to good effect, allowing player to briefly “slow down time” to perform superhuman feats. I’ve seen 2 main flavors of this feature (terms mine):

• Symmetrical, where the players avatar and the rest of the game both play equally slowly. The player’s advantage is not their character being able to move faster than opponents’, but having more time to plan and precisely execute actions. Examples: 1999’s Unreal Tournament’s “slowmo” training mode feature;
• Asymmetrical, where the players character move at faster than the rest of the game moves slowly. Examples: 2001’s Grand Theft Auto III’s “adrenalin pill”; 2001’s Max Payne’s “bullet time”.

That could work too, I guess before we can make the NeuroLInker we have to create the Nerve Gear.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that none of Kawahara’s fictional BCIs – the NerveGear, Amusphere, or Neuro Linker – can work as described in their source fiction of fan sources, where they’re described as “high density microwave transceivers are capable of accessing the user's brain”. Microwaves or other RF EM radiation simply can’t do this.

 

Kawahara’s fiction makes sense in describing the devices of a fictional technology becoming smaller, cheaper, and better over time, but the fundamental technology is purely fictional. “Microwave transceiver” has a neat ring to it, and are ubiquitous in satellite telecommunication technology, but simple aren’t useful for BCIs.

[croth2004]

I would love to go to sao but I do not now if it can happen so I do not now but it can happen like make the thang like log in to your dream state an the computer can us as a helper to put players in there dream state. it can happen you now I just would love to go there guys I would thank everyone love to be in the game.

Edited January 24, 2016 by croth2004

[NotBrad]

When I watched Accel World, I didn’t notice that it was written by Reki Kawahara, or guess that it was set later in the same fictional world as his Sword Art Online. It’s focus on the idea that a brain-computer interface could not connect a person to a computer, but, via a special piece of software (“BB2039.exe”) make them think many (about 960) time faster than normal, causing events in the real world to slow to a crawl in the perception of the user. I found this idea much more incredible than that a little neck-hugging gadget like the series’ ubiquitous Neuro Linker could be support immersive VR/AR.

 

Scientifically, I don’t think there’s any foundation to the idea that input from a BCI could make the brain work faster, perceiving the world as moving slower. The complicated processes that make the brain work can’t be sped up as simply as those that make a computer work can be. Unless our reality is actually being simulated by a computer – that is, the simulation hypothesis is correct – I don’t think the though acceleration depicted in Accel World is possible.

 

The idea of slowing down time in a virtual reality simulation is an old one – perhaps most famously “bullet time” in the 1999 movie The Matrix ability that allows characters to dodge bullets and other perform other amazing feats. After The Matrix, many video games included this idea to good effect, allowing player to briefly “slow down time” to perform superhuman feats. I’ve seen 2 main flavors of this feature (terms mine):

• Symmetrical, where the players avatar and the rest of the game both play equally slowly. The player’s advantage is not their character being able to move faster than opponents’, but having more time to plan and precisely execute actions. Examples: 1999’s Unreal Tournament’s “slowmo” training mode feature;
• Asymmetrical, where the players character move at faster than the rest of the game moves slowly. Examples: 2001’s Grand Theft Auto III’s “adrenalin pill”; 2001’s Max Payne’s “bullet time”.

I disagree on the topic of accelerating time. If you had such a device, and considering that the "game" doesn't allow endless use of the acceleration function, I think it is safe to assume that this is actually cloud computing. Imagine it like this, if you have a device that can artificially generate input that can be processed by the brain aka AR and VR, I think that the reason for the burst points being so limited is because they are actually quantitative resources that can be borrowed.

 

Imagine this:

The tech in SAO(NerveGear/Amusphere) would not work in reality.

To replace this we have an actual invasive technology that reaches all relevant parts of the brain simultaneously.

The processing power of the NeuroLinker like device is is provided via cloud computing to simultaneously drive all of the necessary sensory functions.

Player has the points as shown in the show which are in finite supply, they can only be gained or lost to another player.

Any player who has the program cannot abuse the program due to the limited supply of points.

Player uses the points to accelerate, and these points are gone.

The cloud computing system built into the program and uses the collective processing of the entire cloud to accelerate time as in the show.

This only lasts for one second and the system administration will neither be able to anticipate the event, nor will they be able to trace the user responsible.

The collective processing power of the cloud in 30-40 years would undoubtedly be sufficient to create sufficient input to compensate for brain input.

The input of information to the brain being vastly increased, and with significant reduction in brain usage the entire brain can focus on the conscious mind.

 

The individual perceives time to be slowing down when in fact their brain is simply being given supplementary processing power to make it seem that way. The negative effects of this would be minimal as the show clearly states that to use the program you must have had the NeuroLinker installed since birth. This means only individuals who have already adapted to significant sensory input from computers can withstand the program. Then on top of that there is the fact that recent research has shown that children who are born blind adapt their brains quite quickly so that the parts that usually process visual input actually provide additional auditory processing instead. This concept could mean that similarly to the "downloading of skills" in the matrix, simply having the device installed your whole life means you are granted access to skills and abilities that are unavailable to others simply because your brain has always had supplementary processing power from the NeuroLinker. And unlike the finite resource of gray-matter within your head, that supplementary processing power could be expanded infinitely like in the movie transcendence with jack sparrow.

 

This is just a proof of concept for accelerating, I am not trying to justify all of the quirks in the show. But having a creative idea of what is possible is what makes the show interesting and allows us to explore ideas that cannot exist within our own reality

Edited January 25, 2016 by NotBrad

[Raloris]

It seems like people are getting kind of hooked on the idea that the Neuro Linker from Accel World HAS to accelerate the computing process of the person in question. While I'm sure it could help in some way with developing Full-Dive technology, we should look at what the Neuro Linker does on its own without the accel program. There is a lot of practical potential in the Neuro Linker and it could be used as a semi-invasive way to connect the Nerve Gear, as a peripheral, into the nerve system of the person to allow Full-Dives, can't it? It'd also give a very practical base unit to work with that is useful to everyone in every day life, instead of just working on something only gamers would benefit from. I'm not a scientist in any respect nor am I studying to become one, but that was a thought I had that I didn't notice anyone else throwing out. 

[CraigD]

I disagree on the topic of accelerating time. If you had such a device, and considering that the "game" doesn't allow endless use of the acceleration function, I think it is safe to assume that this is actually cloud computing. Imagine it like this, if you have a device that can artificially generate input that can be processed by the brain aka AR and VR, I think that the reason for the burst points being so limited is because they are actually quantitative resources that can be borrowed.

There are some hints in Kawahara’s fiction that the users of its various BCIs aren’t just interfacing with a computer they way we do nowadays with keyboards and screens, but getting their entire personalities uploaded into them, living as simulated people (which could be done in much less time than in the real world), then getting the experience downloaded into their flesh brains. I’ve chosen not to write much about this, because while the idea of uploading ourselves into computers is very dear to me, I don’t think it bears too much thinking about until more basic technical questions about how to get any detailed information out of and into the brain are answered.

 

If there were some way to allow a person to live many times faster than normal, I imagine games would be low on the list of priorities for uses of it. Imagine calling a computer helpdesk with a technical problem, and instead of waiting hours for someone (like me, as I do this for a living) to troubleshoot your problem, then days or weeks for them to write, test, and install a software fix for it, the IT people could zip off into an accelerated virtual world, take days or weeks to work on the problem, then return a few seconds later to the helpdesk caller with a tested fix ready to install. That would make for some sky high customer satisfaction!

 

On the dark side, people might use such a technology for evil, others use it to combat them, and so on, leading to an arms race of accelerated simulated living consuming the world’s resources leading to an apocalyptic collapse of civilization.

 

Fun thoughts, but not ones of much immediate practical value, I think. :)

 

Imagine this:

The tech in SAO(NerveGear/Amusphere) would not work in reality.

To replace this we have an actual invasive technology that reaches all relevant parts of the brain simultaneously.

That’s pretty much where my thinking about “perfect” BCIs has lead me: to the conclusion that it will require an invasive “wiring” of the brain of a density rivaling that of the neural connections of the brain itself.

 

Most of what I’ve speculated about along these lines (eg this 10 year old post) assumes that such a wiring could be quickly inserted and removed, but it might be easier if it was more permanent – “chronic”, to use medical terminology. Rather than requiring that the wiring automatically install itself in a few seconds, it could be allowed to take days, weeks, or months to densely invade the brain, then stay in place as long as wear and tear permits.

 

The basic technical challenges are little changed by how on-demand or chronic the brain wiring is to be – it remains a nanoscopic scale biomechanical engineering project, getting extraordinarily small mechanical things into the brain. Before we can start thinking about the brain, we’ve got to get nanoscopic machines that can maneuver themselves though any material. My big hunch is that doing this requires that these machines be nanoscopic only in 2-dimensional cross-section, macroscopic in 1-D length – that is, that they be long, fine wire-like objects, not 3-dimensionally nanoscopic “free swimming” “nanobots” like Eric Drexler wrote about in the 1980s - and geniuses like Richard Smalley promptly argues were impossible. In short, my big hunch is that Smalley’s objections to Drexler’s vision of nanotechnology can be addressed by “hybrid nano-macro technology”.

 

...

The processing power of the NeuroLinker like device is is provided via cloud computing to simultaneously drive all of the necessary sensory functions.

…

Once the interface problems are solved, the rest IMHO is mere programming – likely harder programming than any ever done before, but not hard on the order of the difficulty a hybrid nano-macro BCI.

[NotBrad]

-snip-

I agree, but as is explained in the show the game is entirely secret and can only be accessed by those who would keep it a secret. As well as that if anybody loses and is removed the software destroys any memories associated with the game directly. I know this has nothing to do with real life implementation of said game but it is a neat concept. I have not read the manga as I much prefer just watching the shows, but I actually assume given the circumstances that the show will eventually reveal the creator of the accelerated world to be the same as the creator of the AR program it runs off of; Kazuto Kirigaya(Kirigaya Kazuto if you are Japanese) or the digital replication of Kayaba. That would certainly explain how the program went unnoticed for years and has such an effective understanding of both the network and the human brain.

 

But as for real life, there would certainly be those who would attempt to abuse said power. But in all fairness that level of technology won't be around till I am about sixty years old and I will be living on mars so let them do whatever they want.

[CraigD]

I agree, but as is explained in the show the game is entirely secret and can only be accessed by those who would keep it a secret. As well as that if anybody loses and is removed the software destroys any memories associated with the game directly. I know this has nothing to do with real life implementation of said game but it is a neat concept.

I like Reki Kawhara’s stories, including Acell World, but find their common themes of effective secrecy unconvincing. This may be because of a cultural difference – Kawhara is of the more orderly, law-abiding Japanese culture, where secrets are perhaps easier to keep, while I’m of American culture, which has a strong vein of reverence for piracy and religious-like reverence for the idea that “information wants to be free”. I have a hard time imagining a world where an online game provider could prevent competitors from imitating popular game elements, so the idea that a game could be a closely guarded secret known only to a few elite players seems silly to me.

 

As for software that destroys memories, while I might accepts an ELUA allowing it, I’d be certain to make frequent backups of my memories. If, in our fictional universe, we assume computer systems that can read and destroy, I don’t imagine that they also would be able to save and restore them.

 

Thinking about this reminds me of Philip K Dick’s 1952 Paycheck, and 1966 We Can Remember It for You Wholesale and their film adaptations and inspired works, which IMHO includes Charlie Kaufman’s Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and makes me wonder if, given the ability to edit memories, people would care about things like VR games. Would most people prefer to actually play games – or do anything – given the time, frustration, and possible failure that entails, if they could instead chose instead have a wonderful memory of playing a game – or doing most anything – without actually doing it? Deep stuff! :)

 

But as for real life, there would certainly be those who would attempt to abuse said power. But in all fairness that level of technology won't be around till I am about sixty years old and I will be living on mars so let them do whatever they want.

You’re assuming these hypothetical future abuses of power wouldn’t do their ill anywhere there are people to bedevil, be it Earth, Mars, or wherever. If our popular, comic-book culture has taught us nothing else, it’s that evil must be confronted, not fled! ;)

 

What I was alluding to here

On the dark side, people might use such a technology for evil, others use it to combat them, and so on, leading to an arms race of accelerated simulated living consuming the world’s resources leading to an apocalyptic collapse of civilization.

was something worse than mere mistreatment of the People, a future (and maybe not that far in the future) threat arising from the fundamental physics of computers.

 

Computers use energy. Our present computers, in their many instances from phones to PCs to telecom and data centers, uses about 10% of the world’s total electric power. Sometime ca 2013, this exceeded the power used by all aircraft. Faster computers with more data promise to use increasingly more energy. At some point, this could have extreme consequences. In his 2005 novel Accelerando, Charles Stross describes a situation where, still in the 21st Century, the demand for computers has lead to the complete dismantlement of the inner planets for materials to build a Sun-enveloping matrioshka brain – a good thing, at least in the eyes of many transhumanists, and perhaps an inevitable step in the chain of technological accomplishment of which a perfect brain-computer interface is one of the early ones.

[DREAMvEATER]

Hey I'm not going to be of much help. As I'm not a professor or anything.

I've seen in A couple Anime. SAO caught my eye and peeked my interest in this whole VR Gaming idea. And I have done a bit of research on how it would work and such. And I'm not sure if anyone agrees but When The Brain Is effected by a Hallucination inducing drug the brain Somewhat accepts Visions, Sights, Sounds, Feelings both physical and emotional, maybe there'd be a way to use that idea but in a more controllable manner than doing LSD or DMT.

 

Or In Electronic music the Composer or DJ can influence the Feelings And Even Feelings Emotionally And in a way also physically. But what I'm thinking of to use the resonance of sound through the air would need a decent size pod sorta thing with an environment capable of being 100% controlled which is not really possible to have in the average consumer home (it would cost millions most likely)

[SplitDecision]

Hello all

 

I've been doing some reading about the Full-Dive technology and how it can be made a reality. I am in no way a specilist in any scientific field that could possible help offer some truly helpful input. From what I have read, progress is being made towards areas such as photo-realistic graphics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AvCxa9Y9NU, better mapping of individual neurons using fMRI and other technologies https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2012/04/nist-mini-sensor-measures-magnetic-activity-human-brain, and general ideas regarding this subject. There are prosthetic limbs that can be controlled wirelessly however some basically use targeted "guessing" by reading the nerves close to the missing limbs in order to predict what the user is trying to do. From a previous article in this forum, I gathered that even if we were able to read every individual neuron, we cannot follow the path of the nerve all the way to it's destination without an electrode near the limb you are trying to move. 

 

Basically it's like trying to predict where a car is going just by knowing which highway it got on. I definitely think that a Full-Dive technology is not only possible, but will ultimately easily available in the (hopefully) near future. I'd like to see such a thing in my lifetime and I am working on going to college to help this become real. I want to study computer programming and specialize in AI.

 

So the whole "where is the car going" dilemma is a big issue I see. But here's the upside. The brain is the only part of the body that sends out commands...so if you send a signal to your left index finger, telling it to flex, how does the signal know which nerve to travel along. The brain has to tell it to go there specifically right? Well then it's not about predicting where the car will end up, but rather finding out where that car was told to go before it even gets on the highway. So in order to avoid using basically a whole suit built with sensors in it instead of a small, practical helmet, we need to understand what the brain does to make sure the signal gets to where it's supposed to go since it only receives instructions at the brain and makes no pit stops for follow on directions.

 

So here's my theory (being mostly ignorant on neuroscience and psychology it may not be much). Psychologist exist because for the most part, human behavior is predictable. If we have anger management issues, dependency issues, PTSD, or other such problems it usually stems from a similar source as other people with the same issues. So if our brain is made up of neurons that are connected to each other, and not everyone has the same connections as the other person, does that mean that reading which neurons are connected can tell us what a person is like and more importantly, how they think? Some people develop a reading method that makes a connection between letters and colors called synesthesia. Synesthesia is basically when a stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway automatically and (usually) involuntarily triggers another. So when you see the letter "A", you see red. This is either something you are born with or can develop. So if brain mapping technology improves to where we can distinguish the signal from one neuron to another, then maybe we can see what the brain is trying to do and thus accurately move your character's finger instead of his whole hand.

[TravPier18]

Look... I'm only 16... I just got done watching the show sword art online.. I'm in love with the idea completely! I know it's far away but I think it's something I want to be involved in.. I want to help even if it's just to chip away at something bigger. Imagine it for a second. Being able to go on an adventure without ever having to worry that you will actually be harmed. It's amazing. It might even give people a purpose... What about the people who are paralyzed.. What if we could give them what they had back.. I never thought I would want to try and make a difference with anything but I changed my mind. I seriously just want to try I will study for as long as I need to. I don't mind isn't the point of being alive to strive for something that you love and find a purpose in the process. Of course you have to keep in mind all the people who care about you along the way. I realize that most of you have some really smart responses to this but my response is just trying to state my passion for a bigger concept. I want adventure. Without all this corruption that the world has developed. I'm willing to spend whatever it takes to try and figure this out. Up until now I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up. But I'm thinking I want to work to make an idea like this happen. If any of you know where I could go to college and learn some ideas about this sort of thing please let me know.... Also don't be so negative.. what do you think people thought about when we began to tell people we might be able to go to the moon? They probably said something like "Oh well that's decades away" but then they realized it was closer then they thought. That's my point people can achieve things that even have a .001 percent chance of happening. All you need is passion.

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, SplitDecision. If you’d like to share something about yourself, post it in the introductions forum. :)

 

From a previous article in this forum, I gathered that even if we were able to read every individual neuron, we cannot follow the path of the nerve all the way to it's destination without an electrode near the limb you are trying to move.

Fortunately, what you called the "where is the car going" dilemma isn’t a major problem, because the both the part of the brain that gives us our senses (the sensory) and that controls our body (the motor) are arranged in similarly to the parts of our body they sense and control. A convenient way to represent this is with the somatosensory and motor homunculi, which was sketched in pretty good detail in the 1930s by Wilder Penfield. There are many renderings of these such as

From this EBM Consult page.

 

The key idea here is that the brain and body are connected in a very analog way. Unlike a typical computer network, which uses numerically coded addresses where a small difference in address can cause a huge difference in destination, a small change in position of a sensing or stimulating electrode in the brains sensory or motor cortexes results in a small change in position of the body part being sensed or moved.

 

The brain is the only part of the body that sends out commands...so if you send a signal to your left index finger, telling it to flex, how does the signal know which nerve to travel along. The brain has to tell it to go there specifically right?

So the brain doesn’t tell signals where to go. Where in the brain the signal originates is “hard wired” (via a long, complicated series of electric and chemical connections, but hard-connected nonetheless) to where the signal goes. The brain even self-corrects for changes or damage to these connections – it’s amazingly fault tolerant.

 

So if our brain is made up of neurons that are connected to each other, and not everyone has the same connections as the other person, does that mean that reading which neurons are connected can tell us what a person is like and more importantly, how they think?

All human brains are arranged similarly, and similarly to non-human animals’, in the primary cortical areas. Major differences in other areas usually mean problem-causing abnormalities ranging from autism to epilepsy to savantism.

 

An interesting question is whether a device like the NerveGear in SAO would need to be able to “read thoughts”, or just read motor cortex and stimulate sensory cortex activity. I suspect that some sensory input would be best done in a pretty low-tech way – visual information from 3-color displays through the eyes, sound from speakers through the ears. A real NerveGear would, I suspect, resemble a present day VR headset – not all of its inputs would need to be direct computer-to-brain.

[billvon]

An interesting question is whether a device like the NerveGear in SAO would need to be able to “read thoughts”, or just read motor cortex and stimulate sensory cortex activity. I suspect that some sensory input would be best done in a pretty low-tech way – visual information from 3-color displays through the eyes, sound from speakers through the ears. A real NerveGear would, I suspect, resemble a present day VR headset – not all of its inputs would need to be direct computer-to-brain.

There's no discernible difference between the two.  You can, even today, read neural activity.  The challenge is not to "find our thoughts" - the activity is easy to find.  The challenge is to interpret the neural activity we see and transform it into something we would call thought.  We often concentrate on things like the sensorium or motor cortex, because sensory stimulus and muscle contraction is easy to interpret.