Sunday Newsletter (No. 9): Futuristic / creepy health-tech & virtual music events
Here’s my take on a few things in tech and science that have been happening recently:
A Fitbit for your brain. In July, I wrote about brain-machine interfaces, devices that aim to restore neural activity which may have been lost as a result of disease or injury. On Friday, Elon Musk demonstrated his company Neuralink’s latest progress with this technology. In the demo, we see a pig which has the Neuralink device (called the Link) implanted on the surface of it’s brain. When the pig touches something with her snout, the Link is able to detect neural signals from this activity. A device that is able to receive accurate data from brain activity is an important step in being able to use this information to do things like help restore functionality in patients who aren’t able to move their limbs. The device itself is the size of a large coin with thin thread wires coming off it - these wires are covered in electrodes which are used to detect brain signals. Musk described it as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires.” Much like today’s wearable devices, the Link can be charged overnight, can connect to your phone via Bluetooth Low Energy and has a wireless range of 5-10 metres. While getting the Link wouldn’t be quite as simple as buying a Fitbit, the procedure to implant the device was likened to laser eye surgery - performed in under an hour without requiring general anaesthetic. The first human clinical trial of the Neuralink device will be starting soon, focusing on people with paraplegia or tetraplegia caused by a spinal cord injury. The purpose of this initial trial is to test efficacy and safety. When discussing the future potential of this technology, Musk enters dystopian territory - he even admits: “this is obviously sounding increasingly like a Black Mirror episode, but well, I guess they’re pretty good at predicting.” In response to a question about the technology being used to save memories, he describes a world in which you can upload and store your memories and then replay them, and eventually download them into a new body or robot body. As the Neuralink device hasn’t yet been tested in humans, this future still seems relatively distant. However, is this really the future we should be aiming for? We use science and technology to advance humanity and society, with the invention of medicines that prolong our lives and new technological capabilities that improve our lives. For me, the distinction is that these are tools we use rather than who we are. Using BMI technology to treat medical conditions makes sense, but I’m less sure about the idea of healthy people physically merging with technology.
Links:
Neuralink demo highlights - 14 mins (CNET)
Neuralink full demo - 1 hour 12 mins (CNET)
Amazon joins the wearables bandwagon. This week, Amazon announced the launch of Halo, it’s entry into the wearables space. Halo is a strap worn on your wrist that does a lot of the same general activity tracking as Fitbit, Garmin and the Apple Watch, though unlike other wearable devices it doesn’t have a screen, so you have to look at your phone to see your data. It seems to be aimed at people who are interested in more lifestyle fitness tracking, like Fitbit, as opposed to those focused on exercise and sports, like Garmin. There are two unique, and some might say slightly creepy, features to Halo: Body, which uses your camera to create a 3D scan of your body and determine your body fat percentage, and Tone, which listens to your voice to detect your emotional state. Tone is the feature I find particularly odd - I’m not entirely sure what problem it’s solving for people. It seems that having a device intermittently listen to your speech and categorise your emotional state as things like “hopeful”, “bored” or “worried” would help Amazon to develop their Alexa natural language processing algorithms or to target you to buy that waffle maker when you’re feeling down more than it would help a user. Understanding your health is important and products in the health tech space should exist to improve people’s lives - it’s great that innovation is happening in this space and it’s unsurprising that big players in tech want to get involved but there are ethical considerations that come with building these products. I don’t perceive Amazon as a particularly human-centric company and sadly I would not be surprised if the primary purpose for the Tone feature, and perhaps Halo more generally, is not to help people better monitor their health, but to gather more data and improve their proprietary technology.
Links:
Amazon announces Halo, a fitness band and app that scans your body and voice (The Verge)
Introducing Amazon Halo (Amazon)
Virtual concerts. The coronavirus pandemic has changed a lot of things about our world, from remote working to virtual exercise classes and QR codes in restaurants. Festivals and concerts are not particularly conducive to social distancing, and virtual music events have allowed artists to stay connected with their fans during the pandemic. A few interesting things have happened in the virtual music events space this week. UK startup MelodyVR announced that it acquired Napster, one of the original disruptors in the digital music space which initially allowed people to share music files (MP3s) and now focuses on streaming. MelodyVR is a virtual reality (VR) platform for live music where people use VR headsets or their phones to watch live music events. They recently set up studios in London and Los Angeles for artists to continue to perform during the pandemic, allowing users to watch these performances from the safety of their homes. MelodyVR’s CEO Anthony Matchett stated that “MelodyVR’s acquisition of Napster will result in the development of the first ever music entertainment platform which combines immersive visual content and music streaming.” In a similar vein, this week it was revealed that Spotify is developing a virtual events features. It hasn’t been released yet but appears to be a section on the artist’s page which lists upcoming virtual events. For companies in the digital music space, virtual events are naturally front of mind at the moment, but is this a temporary adaptation to the pandemic environment, or are virtual events a long-term strategy? While I don’t see concerts in the “before-sense” happening anytime soon, I’m not entirely convinced by virtual music events. There’s something unique about the feeling of being in a crowd and having splashes of beer spilled on you while your tone-deaf friend is singing loudly next to you that I’m not sure even a world-class VR experience could satisfy.
Links:
Spotify is developing a ‘virtual events’ feature (TechCrunch)
Napster sold to London startup MelodyVR in surprise $70m deal (The Guardian)
This is a newsletter of a three things in tech and science that I've found interesting this week. It's a 5 minute read on a Sunday, in which I’m hoping you’ll learn something new.
Were you forwarded this? Subscribe here.