Twenty-first century, here we come. A few days ago, AtAT's collective "wow alert" got tripped by the upcoming advances in voice technology-- not so much the announcement that Dragon Systems was finally planning to release a decent continuous speech dictation system for the Mac, mind you; while that's nice, that's more of a catch-up for the Mac side than a cool futuristic advance. Instead, we're talking about the voice print login technology in Mac OS 8.7, code-named "Sonata." The whole idea of typing in a password just seems so '80's, doesn't it? Speaking a pass phrase and having the computer analyze your voice as an identification measure-- now that's cool. (Why do we envision thousands of office workers practicing their imitations of their bosses and learning when the payroll office is lightly inhabited?)

But why stop there? Personally, we hear enough talking all day without people speaking their way into their systems, dictating lengthy missives, or yammering at their computers trying to get them to repair their files or to print that monthly report. (Actually, we hear a lot of people yelling at their computers in that manner-- but mostly on the PC side of the fence, and without voice command software installed...) Our point is that voice may seem like a cool futuristic next-generation method of computer control, but it may actually just make the world a noisier place without introducing a huge benefit. After all, is it that much more efficient to dictate your email than to type it?

So IBVA Technologies is going a step further. According to MacCentral, the brain/computer interface they've been showing at recent Macworld Expos is now fully compatible with iMacs and blue-and-white G3s. That's right; to a limited extent, you can actually think things into your Mac. Right now, the IBVA system lets you "change movies as they are being watched, create interactive brain wave influenced music, control digital video and sound, study brain activity," and do other fun stuff. Oh, sure, you can't exactly "think" your new novel into your favorite word processor, but it's early yet. We're most intrigued by the claim that IBVA lets you "fight brain versus brain against another person." Ooooh... Anyone seen Scanners? And in a match-up between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, is there any question whose head would explode?