telepathy
Companies like AlterEgo, Telepathic Technologies, and MindPortal are developing brain-computer interfaces that enable communication without spoken words. these technologies work by detecting subtle neuromuscular or neural signals associated with inner speech (the tiny movements we make when we think of words.)
While this enables more seamless and intuitive interaction than, say, texting, it still depends on a symbolic medium: language.
If the next frontier in communication is interpretation, we may want to develop technologies that can detect or convey sentiment and emotion directly.
Can we create technologies that enable users to actually feel what another person feels?
While greater understanding is likely to increase productivity, but as we move closer to that possibility, it’s worth asking whether perfect understanding might actually diminish human connection. Our imperfect knowledge of others and the acceptance that we can never fully know them is a crucial part of ambiguitiy, which itself can be a catalyst for meaning. Striving to eliminate communication errors across every context - or worse, creating the illusion that communication and understanding are perfectly callibrated - shouldn’t necessarily be the goal.