Here are some images of the device, that looks like the eXistenZ real pod, Cronenberg’s movie from 1999, and like some parts of the device presented by Alex Singer in the 511 presentation “Close Encounters of the Digital Kind”. This was created some time ago in the MIT Lab Europe in Dublin by the Mind Games Group. This headcase was called Cerebus and it was used for other applications than reducing the stress, http://mindgames.medialabeurope.org/.
Images of the headcase brain interface Cerebus from the Mind Games Group, MIT Media Lab Europe, published by the PC Gamer (July 2004, page 18) and in the Mind Games Group website.
It was tested in the videogame Mind Balance for balancing a character.
Image of Mawg, the monster character, who has to keep his balance and to avoid failing with the help of the player’s brain electric frequencies. As the group said “The game itself is a game based on balance. By shifting your focus to either side of the screen it is possible to balance/unbalance a tight rope figure”. Project Mind Balance, mindgames.medialabeurope.org/.
It was a pity that MIT Europe was closed because the lack of finding a new funding model. Games as Relaxing to win and new projects focus in therapeutic, educational but entertainment applications are more than necessary nowadays.
Image of a moment in the videogame Relaxing to Win, where the player starts to fly because has achieve a good grade of relaxation.
The best choices are taken based in peaceful states of minds where the creativity gives the best answer to a conflict of information. But only there would be good choices if there are good motives and for the common welfare applications. All the rest is of technology is not useful for the human being evolution.
Here is, perhaps, a very necessary device and application for the real world, where people get diseases or death ( hearth attack, cancer …) as consequence of stress, controlled or uncontrolled.
There are some hardware & software solutions for creating entertainment videogames for relaxation. If you do not stress you can balance your virtual character, and your real self, or you can go faster and fly as a dragon does. Finally you win health, serenity & perspective instead losing your mind overwhelming yourself with too much nice but stupid info. Perhaps it would be very useful to increase each person capabilities to be focus in their personal & common goals, instead of working as a money slave too much hours thinking that more hours mean the development of better projects. Wrong answer! Sometimes working less hours but enjoying them and with a calm mode we are more productive. Time is more valuable than money because it goes and you do not recover it. Then perhaps could be useful to focus research projects for relaxing the people, instead of reducing the stress to invest more time at work.
If I would be a rich man I would invest and help to develop Brain Interfaces for helping to relax the human beings. A relaxed and a happy human being is going to take good choices for sure. Perhaps it is not about the capabilities of technology but it would be about what are the applications and the motivations for building those technologies.
Here is a 25 $ brain device, with good vibrations & AA batteries, that I put over my head to reduce my headache after blog in this article ; -) (A contemporary practice of the combination of brain devices with computer interfaces).
