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Surfing the Web with nothing but brainwaves

Kiss your keyboard goodbye: Soon we’ll jack our brains directly into the Net - and that’s just the beginning.

Stu Wolf, one of the top scientists at Darpa, the Pentagon’s scientific research agency which gave birth to the Internet, seriously believes we’ll all be wearing computers in headbands within 20 years.

By that time, we’ll have superfast, supertiny computers that make today’s machines look like typewriters. The desktop will be dead, says Wolf, and the headband will dominate.

"We already know we can trigger neurons mechanically," he says. "You can interact directly with the brain without implanted electrodes. Then the next step is being able to think something and have it happen: Flying a plane, driving a car, operating household machinery."

Controlling devices with the mind is just the beginning. Next, Wolf believes, is what he calls "network-enabled telepathy" - instant thought transfer. In other words, your thoughts will flow from your brain over the network right into someone else’s brain. If you think instant messaging is addictive, just wait for instant thinking.

The only issue, Wolf says, is making sure it’s consensual; that’s a problem likely to tax the minds of security experts.

But just think of the advantages. In the office of the future, the conference call, too, will be remembered as a medieval form of torture.