1 00:00:06,300 --> 00:00:11,279 The maxim, "Know thyself" has been around since the ancient Greeks. 2 00:00:11,303 --> 00:00:15,504 Some attribute this golden world knowledge to Plato, others to Pythagoras. 3 00:00:15,528 --> 00:00:18,704 But the truth is it doesn't really matter which sage said it first, 4 00:00:18,728 --> 00:00:21,515 because it's still sage advice, even today. 5 00:00:22,871 --> 00:00:24,331 "Know thyself." 6 00:00:24,355 --> 00:00:28,285 It's pithy almost to the point of being meaningless, 7 00:00:28,309 --> 00:00:30,844 but it rings familiar and true, doesn't it? 8 00:00:31,995 --> 00:00:33,305 "Know thyself." 9 00:00:34,934 --> 00:00:38,249 I understand this timeless dictum as a statement about the problems, 10 00:00:38,273 --> 00:00:41,075 or more exactly, the confusions, of consciousness. 11 00:00:41,550 --> 00:00:43,912 I've always been fascinated with knowing the self. 12 00:00:43,936 --> 00:00:46,443 This fascination led me to submerge myself in art, 13 00:00:46,467 --> 00:00:49,924 study neuroscience, and later, to become a psychotherapist. 14 00:00:49,948 --> 00:00:53,624 Today I combine all my passions as the CEO of InteraXon, 15 00:00:53,648 --> 00:00:55,693 a thought-controlled computing company. 16 00:00:56,064 --> 00:01:01,075 My goal, quite simply, is to help people become more in tune with themselves. 17 00:01:01,406 --> 00:01:04,501 I take it from this little dictum, "Know thyself." 18 00:01:05,224 --> 00:01:06,707 If you think about it, 19 00:01:06,731 --> 00:01:11,275 this imperative is kind of the defining characteristic of our species, isn't it? 20 00:01:11,958 --> 00:01:13,600 I mean, it's self-awareness 21 00:01:13,624 --> 00:01:17,240 that separates Homo sapiens from earlier instances of our mankind. 22 00:01:18,766 --> 00:01:20,828 Today we're often too busy 23 00:01:20,852 --> 00:01:25,633 tending to our iPhones and iPods to really stop and get to know ourselves. 24 00:01:26,037 --> 00:01:28,664 Under the deluge of minute-to-minute text conversations, 25 00:01:28,688 --> 00:01:31,748 e-mails, relentless exchange of media channels 26 00:01:31,772 --> 00:01:34,573 and passwords and apps and reminders and Tweets and tags, 27 00:01:34,597 --> 00:01:38,323 we lose sight of what all this fuss is supposed to be about in the first place: 28 00:01:38,347 --> 00:01:39,962 Ourselves. 29 00:01:39,986 --> 00:01:42,038 Much of the time we're transfixed 30 00:01:42,062 --> 00:01:45,354 by all of the ways we can reflect ourselves out into the world. 31 00:01:45,378 --> 00:01:50,559 And we can barely find the time to reflect deeply back in on our own selves. 32 00:01:52,456 --> 00:01:55,015 We've cluttered ourselves up with all this. 33 00:01:55,039 --> 00:01:58,470 And we feel like we have to get far, far away to a secluded retreat, 34 00:01:58,494 --> 00:01:59,944 leaving it all behind. 35 00:01:59,968 --> 00:02:03,076 So we go far away to the top of a mountain, 36 00:02:03,100 --> 00:02:05,130 assuming that perching ourselves on a piece 37 00:02:05,154 --> 00:02:09,643 is bound to give us the respite we need to sort the clutter, the chaotic everyday, 38 00:02:09,667 --> 00:02:11,341 and find ourselves again. 39 00:02:11,646 --> 00:02:16,123 But on that mountain where we gain that beautiful peace of mind, 40 00:02:16,639 --> 00:02:18,204 what are we really achieving? 41 00:02:19,484 --> 00:02:22,612 It's really only a successful escape. 42 00:02:23,668 --> 00:02:25,488 Think of the term we use, "Retreat." 43 00:02:25,512 --> 00:02:28,333 This is the term that armies use when they've lost a battle. 44 00:02:28,357 --> 00:02:30,186 It means we've got to get out of here. 45 00:02:30,210 --> 00:02:32,705 Is this how we feel about the pressures of our world, 46 00:02:32,729 --> 00:02:34,723 that in order to get inside ourselves, 47 00:02:34,747 --> 00:02:36,176 you have to run for the hills? 48 00:02:36,815 --> 00:02:40,031 And the problem with escaping your day-to-day life 49 00:02:40,055 --> 00:02:42,470 is that you have to come home, eventually. 50 00:02:43,691 --> 00:02:45,104 So when you think about it, 51 00:02:45,128 --> 00:02:49,582 we're almost like a tourist visiting ourselves over there. 52 00:02:49,606 --> 00:02:52,175 And eventually, that vacation's got to come to an end. 53 00:02:52,775 --> 00:02:55,524 So my question to you is, 54 00:02:55,548 --> 00:02:59,627 can we find ways to know ourselves without the escape? 55 00:03:00,381 --> 00:03:03,942 Can we redefine our relationship with the technologized world 56 00:03:03,966 --> 00:03:07,614 in order to have the heightened sense of self-awareness that we seek? 57 00:03:07,638 --> 00:03:11,114 Can we live here and now in our wired web 58 00:03:11,138 --> 00:03:15,660 and still follow those ancient instructions, "Know thyself?" 59 00:03:17,260 --> 00:03:18,866 I say the answer is yes. 60 00:03:18,890 --> 00:03:20,936 And I'm here today to share a new way 61 00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:23,370 that we're working with technology to this end, 62 00:03:23,394 --> 00:03:26,849 to get familiar with our inner self like never before... 63 00:03:26,873 --> 00:03:31,366 Humanizing technology and furthering that age-old quest of ours 64 00:03:31,390 --> 00:03:32,928 to more fully know the self. 65 00:03:35,083 --> 00:03:38,400 It's called thought-controlled computing. 66 00:03:41,241 --> 00:03:42,748 You may or may not have noticed 67 00:03:42,772 --> 00:03:45,081 that I'm wearing a tiny electrode on my forehead. 68 00:03:45,105 --> 00:03:46,776 This is actually a brainwave sensor 69 00:03:46,800 --> 00:03:49,156 that's reading the electrical activity of my brain 70 00:03:49,180 --> 00:03:50,376 as I give this talk. 71 00:03:50,871 --> 00:03:54,381 These brainwaves are being analyzed and we can see them as a graph. 72 00:03:55,178 --> 00:03:57,711 That blue line there is my brainwave. 73 00:03:57,844 --> 00:04:01,588 It's the direct signal being recorded from my head, rendered in real time. 74 00:04:01,961 --> 00:04:05,372 The green and red bars show that same signal displayed by frequency, 75 00:04:05,396 --> 00:04:07,110 with lower frequencies here 76 00:04:07,134 --> 00:04:08,837 and higher frequencies up here. 77 00:04:09,690 --> 00:04:12,849 You're actually looking inside my head as I speak. 78 00:04:13,805 --> 00:04:16,805 These graphs are compelling, they're undulating, 79 00:04:16,829 --> 00:04:20,075 but from a human's perspective, they're actually not very useful. 80 00:04:21,309 --> 00:04:23,286 That's why we've spent a lot of time 81 00:04:23,310 --> 00:04:27,087 thinking about how to make this data meaningful to the people who use it. 82 00:04:27,111 --> 00:04:28,625 For instance, 83 00:04:28,649 --> 00:04:32,604 what if I could use this data to find out how relaxed I am at any moment? 84 00:04:32,628 --> 00:04:34,449 Or what if I can take that information 85 00:04:34,473 --> 00:04:37,455 and put it into an organic shape up on the screen? 86 00:04:40,561 --> 00:04:42,612 The shape on the right over here 87 00:04:42,637 --> 00:04:45,314 has become an indicator of what's going on in my head. 88 00:04:45,338 --> 00:04:46,832 The more relaxed I am, 89 00:04:46,856 --> 00:04:49,318 the more the energy's going to fall through it. 90 00:04:49,342 --> 00:04:52,196 I may also be interested in knowing how focused I am, 91 00:04:52,220 --> 00:04:55,978 so I can put my level of attention into the circuit board on the other side. 92 00:04:56,002 --> 00:04:57,617 And the more focused my brain is, 93 00:04:57,641 --> 00:05:00,522 the more the circuit board is going to surge with energy. 94 00:05:01,746 --> 00:05:05,170 Ordinarily, I would have no way of knowing how focused or relaxed I was 95 00:05:05,194 --> 00:05:06,933 in any tangible way. 96 00:05:07,896 --> 00:05:10,155 As we know, our feelings about how we're feeling 97 00:05:10,179 --> 00:05:12,008 are notoriously unreliable. 98 00:05:12,032 --> 00:05:14,865 We've all had stress creep up on us without even noticing it 99 00:05:14,889 --> 00:05:17,305 until we lost it on someone who didn't deserve it, 100 00:05:17,329 --> 00:05:20,903 and then we realize that we probably should have checked in with ourselves 101 00:05:20,927 --> 00:05:22,080 a little earlier. 102 00:05:22,104 --> 00:05:25,222 This new awareness opens up vast possibilities 103 00:05:25,246 --> 00:05:28,276 for applications that help improve our lives and ourselves. 104 00:05:29,499 --> 00:05:32,184 We're trying to create technology that uses the insights 105 00:05:32,208 --> 00:05:34,891 to make our work more efficient, our breaks more relaxing 106 00:05:34,915 --> 00:05:37,915 and our connections deeper and more fulfilling than ever. 107 00:05:38,891 --> 00:05:41,664 I'm going to share some of these visions with you in a bit, 108 00:05:41,688 --> 00:05:44,276 but first I want to take a look at how we got here. 109 00:05:44,300 --> 00:05:47,559 By the way, feel free to check in on my head at any time. 110 00:05:47,768 --> 00:05:49,745 (Laughter) 111 00:05:49,769 --> 00:05:51,276 My team at InteraXon and I 112 00:05:51,300 --> 00:05:55,089 have been developing thought-controlled application for almost a decade now. 113 00:05:55,113 --> 00:05:56,733 In the first phase of development, 114 00:05:56,757 --> 00:06:00,193 we were really enthused by all the things we could control with our mind. 115 00:06:00,217 --> 00:06:04,491 We were making things activate, light up and work just by thinking. 116 00:06:05,039 --> 00:06:08,655 We were transcending the space between the mind and the device. 117 00:06:09,298 --> 00:06:12,049 We brought to life a vast array of prototypes and products 118 00:06:12,073 --> 00:06:14,094 that you could control with your mind, 119 00:06:14,118 --> 00:06:16,034 like thought-controlled home appliances 120 00:06:16,058 --> 00:06:19,774 or slot-car games or video games or a levitating chair. 121 00:06:20,444 --> 00:06:24,073 We created technology and applications that engaged people's imaginations, 122 00:06:24,097 --> 00:06:25,558 and it was really exciting. 123 00:06:26,682 --> 00:06:30,514 And then we were asked to do something really big for the Olympics. 124 00:06:31,139 --> 00:06:33,402 We were invited to create a massive installation 125 00:06:33,426 --> 00:06:35,264 at the Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics, 126 00:06:35,288 --> 00:06:36,819 were used in Vancouver, 127 00:06:36,843 --> 00:06:39,560 got to control the lighting on the CN Tower, 128 00:06:39,584 --> 00:06:42,499 the Canadian Parliament buildings and Niagara Falls 129 00:06:42,523 --> 00:06:46,275 from all the way across the country using their minds. 130 00:06:46,604 --> 00:06:49,823 Over 17 days at the Olympics, 7,000 visitors from all over the world 131 00:06:49,847 --> 00:06:52,012 actually got to individually control the light 132 00:06:52,036 --> 00:06:54,667 from the CN Tower, parliament and Niagara in real time 133 00:06:54,691 --> 00:06:57,712 with their minds from across the country, 3,000 km away. 134 00:06:58,636 --> 00:07:02,175 So controlling stuff with your mind is pretty cool. 135 00:07:03,010 --> 00:07:06,472 But we're always interested in multitiered levels of human interaction. 136 00:07:06,496 --> 00:07:09,897 And so we began looking into inventing thought-controlled applications 137 00:07:09,921 --> 00:07:12,192 in a more complex frame than just control. 138 00:07:12,682 --> 00:07:15,176 And that was responsiveness. 139 00:07:15,941 --> 00:07:17,512 We realized that we had a system 140 00:07:17,536 --> 00:07:20,142 that allowed technology to know something about you. 141 00:07:20,166 --> 00:07:22,801 And it could join into the relationship with you. 142 00:07:23,525 --> 00:07:25,649 We created the responsive room 143 00:07:25,673 --> 00:07:28,665 where the lights, music and blinds adjusted to your state. 144 00:07:29,040 --> 00:07:32,043 They followed these little shifts in your mental activity. 145 00:07:32,467 --> 00:07:35,261 So as you settled into relaxation at the end of a hard day, 146 00:07:35,285 --> 00:07:36,616 on the couch in our office, 147 00:07:36,640 --> 00:07:38,796 the music would mellow with you. 148 00:07:38,820 --> 00:07:41,426 When you read, the desk lamp would get brighter. 149 00:07:41,450 --> 00:07:45,965 If you nod off, the system would know, dimming to darkness as you do. 150 00:07:48,125 --> 00:07:51,800 We then realized that if technology could know something about you 151 00:07:51,824 --> 00:07:53,030 and use it to help you, 152 00:07:53,054 --> 00:07:55,874 there's an even more valuable application than that. 153 00:07:55,898 --> 00:07:58,969 That you could know something about yourself. 154 00:07:59,724 --> 00:08:02,902 We could know sides of ourselves that were all but invisible 155 00:08:02,926 --> 00:08:05,475 and come to see things that were previously hidden. 156 00:08:06,333 --> 00:08:09,079 Let me show you an example of what I'm talking about here. 157 00:08:09,173 --> 00:08:12,577 I do have a video of an application I created for the iPad. 158 00:08:13,670 --> 00:08:18,909 So the goal of the original game Zen Bound is to wrap a rope around a wooden form. 159 00:08:18,933 --> 00:08:20,477 So you use it with your headset. 160 00:08:20,501 --> 00:08:23,357 The headset connects wirelessly to an iPad or a smartphone. 161 00:08:23,398 --> 00:08:27,728 In that headset, you have fabric sensors on your forehead and above the ear. 162 00:08:27,752 --> 00:08:29,274 In the original Zen Bound game, 163 00:08:29,298 --> 00:08:31,955 you play it by scrolling your fingers over the pad. 164 00:08:31,984 --> 00:08:33,926 In the game that we created, of course, 165 00:08:33,950 --> 00:08:38,102 you control the wooden form that's on the screen there with your mind. 166 00:08:38,206 --> 00:08:40,424 As you focus on the wooden form, 167 00:08:40,448 --> 00:08:41,644 it rotates. 168 00:08:42,868 --> 00:08:45,901 The more you focus, the faster the rotation. 169 00:08:46,758 --> 00:08:48,408 This is for real. 170 00:08:48,432 --> 00:08:49,876 This is not a fake. 171 00:08:51,098 --> 00:08:52,938 What's really interesting to me though 172 00:08:52,962 --> 00:08:56,832 is at the end of the game, you get stats and feedback about how you did. 173 00:08:56,856 --> 00:09:00,945 You have graphs and charts that tell you how your brain was doing... 174 00:09:00,969 --> 00:09:04,021 Not just how much rope you used or what your high score is, 175 00:09:04,045 --> 00:09:07,893 but what was going on inside of your mind. 176 00:09:08,498 --> 00:09:10,367 And this is valuable feedback 177 00:09:10,391 --> 00:09:14,910 that we can use to understand what's going on inside of ourselves. 178 00:09:16,734 --> 00:09:19,928 I like to call this "intra-active." 179 00:09:20,790 --> 00:09:23,991 Normally, we think about technology as interactive. 180 00:09:24,491 --> 00:09:27,202 This technology is intra-active. 181 00:09:28,162 --> 00:09:31,751 It understands what's inside of you 182 00:09:31,775 --> 00:09:34,140 and builds a sort of responsive relationship 183 00:09:34,164 --> 00:09:36,161 between you and your technology 184 00:09:36,785 --> 00:09:40,740 so that you can use this information to move you forward. 185 00:09:41,372 --> 00:09:45,834 So you can use this information to understand you in a responsive loop. 186 00:09:46,613 --> 00:09:47,613 For example, 187 00:09:48,133 --> 00:09:51,156 a thought controlled computer can teach children with ADD 188 00:09:51,252 --> 00:09:53,052 how to improve their focus. 189 00:09:53,347 --> 00:09:57,743 With ADD, children have a low proportion of beta waves, or focus state, 190 00:09:57,768 --> 00:09:59,769 and high proportion of theta states. 191 00:09:59,815 --> 00:10:02,966 So you can create applications that reward focused brain states. 192 00:10:03,032 --> 00:10:06,237 So you can imagine kids playing video games with their brain waves 193 00:10:06,261 --> 00:10:08,730 and improving their ADD symptoms as they do it. 194 00:10:08,754 --> 00:10:10,648 This can be as effective as Ritalin. 195 00:10:11,585 --> 00:10:13,426 Perhaps even more importantly, 196 00:10:13,450 --> 00:10:16,027 thought-controlled computing can give children with ADD 197 00:10:16,051 --> 00:10:18,954 insights into their own fluctuating mental states, 198 00:10:18,978 --> 00:10:22,610 so they can better understand themselves and their learning needs. 199 00:10:22,634 --> 00:10:26,610 The way these children will be able to use their new awareness to improve themselves 200 00:10:26,634 --> 00:10:29,558 will upend many of the damaging and widespread social stigmas 201 00:10:29,582 --> 00:10:34,459 that people who are diagnosed as different are challenged with. 202 00:10:36,414 --> 00:10:37,770 We can peer inside our heads 203 00:10:37,794 --> 00:10:40,577 and interact with what was once locked away from us, 204 00:10:40,601 --> 00:10:43,499 what once mystified and separated us. 205 00:10:44,842 --> 00:10:48,132 Brainwave technology can understand us, anticipate our emotions 206 00:10:48,156 --> 00:10:50,169 and find the best solutions for our needs. 207 00:10:50,793 --> 00:10:53,539 Imagine this collected awareness of the individual 208 00:10:53,563 --> 00:10:56,075 computed and reflected across an entire lifespan. 209 00:10:56,758 --> 00:11:00,275 Imagine the insights that you can gain from this kind of second sight. 210 00:11:00,781 --> 00:11:03,726 It would be like plugging into your own personal Google. 211 00:11:04,096 --> 00:11:05,346 On the subject of Google, 212 00:11:05,370 --> 00:11:07,276 today you can search and tag images 213 00:11:07,300 --> 00:11:10,672 based on the thoughts and feelings you had while you watched them. 214 00:11:10,696 --> 00:11:13,440 You can tag pictures of baby animals as happy, 215 00:11:13,464 --> 00:11:15,934 or whatever baby animals are to you, 216 00:11:15,958 --> 00:11:19,778 and then you can search that database, navigating with your feelings, 217 00:11:19,802 --> 00:11:22,203 rather than the keywords that just hint at them. 218 00:11:22,269 --> 00:11:24,528 Or you could tag Facebook photos 219 00:11:24,552 --> 00:11:29,144 with the emotions that you had associated with those memories 220 00:11:29,168 --> 00:11:32,870 and then instantly prioritize the streams that catch your attention, 221 00:11:33,594 --> 00:11:34,823 just like this. 222 00:11:36,147 --> 00:11:39,233 Humanizing technology is about taking what's already natural 223 00:11:39,257 --> 00:11:40,857 about the human-tech experience 224 00:11:40,881 --> 00:11:44,267 and building technology seamlessly in tandem with it. 225 00:11:44,291 --> 00:11:46,600 As it aligns with our human behaviors, 226 00:11:46,624 --> 00:11:49,800 it can allow us to make better sense of what we do 227 00:11:49,824 --> 00:11:52,059 and, more importantly, why. 228 00:11:52,566 --> 00:11:55,676 Creating a big picture out of all the important little details 229 00:11:55,700 --> 00:11:56,950 that make up who we are. 230 00:11:58,614 --> 00:12:02,162 With humanized technology we can monitor the quality of your sleep cycles. 231 00:12:02,703 --> 00:12:07,254 When our productivity starts to slacken, we can go back to that data 232 00:12:07,279 --> 00:12:11,227 and see how we can make more effective balance between work and play. 233 00:12:12,432 --> 00:12:16,365 Do you know what causes fatigue in you or what brings out your energetic self, 234 00:12:16,389 --> 00:12:18,307 what triggers cause you to be depressed 235 00:12:18,331 --> 00:12:21,849 or what fun things are going to bring you out of that funk? 236 00:12:23,457 --> 00:12:25,103 Imagine if you had access to data 237 00:12:25,127 --> 00:12:28,324 that allowed you to rank on a scale of overall happiness 238 00:12:28,348 --> 00:12:31,204 which people in your life made you the happiest, 239 00:12:31,927 --> 00:12:34,323 or what activities brought you joy. 240 00:12:34,347 --> 00:12:37,402 Would you make more time for those people? Would you prioritize? 241 00:12:37,426 --> 00:12:38,701 Would you get a divorce? 242 00:12:38,725 --> 00:12:40,110 (Laughter) 243 00:12:40,134 --> 00:12:42,623 What thought-controlled computing can allow you to do 244 00:12:42,647 --> 00:12:45,439 is build colorful layered pictures of our lives. 245 00:12:45,463 --> 00:12:48,949 And with this, we can get the skinny on our psychological happenings 246 00:12:48,973 --> 00:12:51,381 and build a story of our behaviors over time. 247 00:12:51,819 --> 00:12:55,038 We can begin to see the underlying narratives that propel us forward 248 00:12:55,062 --> 00:12:57,651 and tell us about what's going on. 249 00:12:58,473 --> 00:13:03,001 And from this, we can learn how to change the plot, the outcome 250 00:13:03,025 --> 00:13:06,011 and the character of our personal stories. 251 00:13:07,666 --> 00:13:11,807 Two millennia ago, those Greeks had some powerful insights. 252 00:13:12,522 --> 00:13:14,942 They knew that a fundamental piece falls into place 253 00:13:14,966 --> 00:13:17,705 when you start to live out their little phrase, 254 00:13:17,729 --> 00:13:20,076 when you come into contact with yourself. 255 00:13:20,521 --> 00:13:23,872 They understood the power of human narrative 256 00:13:23,896 --> 00:13:27,892 and the value that we place on humans as changing, evolving and growing. 257 00:13:28,448 --> 00:13:31,076 But they understood something more fundamental... 258 00:13:31,925 --> 00:13:34,076 The sheer joy in discovery, 259 00:13:35,206 --> 00:13:37,735 the delight and fascination that we get from the world 260 00:13:37,759 --> 00:13:39,335 and being ourselves in it; 261 00:13:39,958 --> 00:13:44,751 the richness that we get from seeing, feeling and knowing the lives that we are. 262 00:13:47,027 --> 00:13:48,194 My mom's an artist, 263 00:13:48,218 --> 00:13:52,076 and as a child, I'd often see her bring things to life with the stroke of a brush. 264 00:13:52,100 --> 00:13:54,708 One moment, it was all white space, pure possibility. 265 00:13:54,732 --> 00:13:58,228 The next, it was alive with her colorful ideas and expressions. 266 00:13:58,957 --> 00:14:03,802 As I sat easel-side, watching her transform canvas after canvas, 267 00:14:04,653 --> 00:14:07,218 I learned that you could create your own world. 268 00:14:08,333 --> 00:14:10,537 I learned that our own inner worlds... 269 00:14:10,561 --> 00:14:13,701 Our ideas, emotions and imaginations... 270 00:14:13,725 --> 00:14:16,476 Were, in fact, not bound by our brains and bodies. 271 00:14:17,008 --> 00:14:20,351 If you could think it, if you could discover it, 272 00:14:20,375 --> 00:14:22,088 you could bring it to life. 273 00:14:23,337 --> 00:14:25,476 To me, thought-controlled computing 274 00:14:25,500 --> 00:14:27,903 is as simple and powerful as a paintbrush... 275 00:14:27,927 --> 00:14:31,475 One more tool to unlock and enliven the hidden worlds within us. 276 00:14:32,463 --> 00:14:36,732 I look forward to the day that I can sit beside you, easel-side, 277 00:14:37,290 --> 00:14:41,405 watching the world that we can create with our new toolboxes 278 00:14:41,429 --> 00:14:44,475 and the discoveries that we can make about ourselves. 279 00:14:45,992 --> 00:14:47,199 Thank you. 280 00:14:47,223 --> 00:14:49,023 (Applause)