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Connecting Your Brain Directly To The Internet

It could happen before you expect it.  I read a lot of science fiction and have been fantasizing about the opportunity to jack into cyberspace for a long time.  We are getting one step closer with our latest investment in EmSense.

July 29th, 2008     Categories: Foundry Group    
  • http://www.knyshov.com Leonid S. Knyshov

    Can't wait!

    All that spam flooding straight into my brain… oh the rush of it!

  • http://www.kidmercuryblog.com kid mercury

    have you read the book “the age of spiritual machines” by ray kurzweil? it talks a lot about the man machine merger. i bet you would find it interesting if you have not read it already.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld bfeld

      It’s in my infinite pile of books to read.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld bfeld

      It’s in my infinite pile of books to read.

    • http://www.feld.com Brad Feld

      It’s in my infinite pile of books to read.

  • http://boxofmeat.net/ J.D. Falk

    Reading the foundrygroup post, it sure sounds like this company's aim is to measure our brains for the benefit of advertisers — which is also an interesting idea from science fiction, but corporate access to my brain is not a future I'd look forward to.

    EmSense, as one of the first in this field, will set the standards & de facto best practices that all future ventures will adopt. But will they follow the lead of the email marketing industry, making spam a gigantic industry and generally abusing their customers until absolutely forced to change? Will they follow the example of the social networks, ignoring privacy, security, and even scaling issues, each one making the same mistakes as their predecessors? Or will they put their subjects first, refusing to abuse our brains no matter how much money the voracious advertising industry waves in their faces?

  • j.c.

    wwjd?

  • j.c.

    wwjd?

  • Steve Silverstein

    Brad, I have always found your investments to be thoughtful and credible, and I also believed that the Foundry group performs adequate due diligence and exercises duty of care, so I am a little surprised at this one. Emsense makes fraudulent claims on measuring the brain when all they have are some bio-metrics. Their headset measures frontalis muscle activity, and NOT the frontal lobes, especially with two puny sensors. I spoke to a few of my friends in the faculty at MIT, and the Media Lab, and the Neuroscience department, and they are actually appalled and outraged that Emsense would make claims and involve MIT's name claiming tacit support. I have written to Coca Cola asking why they would waste valuable marketing dollars endorsing psuedo-science. Who gets harmed by this – end consumers, Coca Cola, their shareholders, the good name of MIT, the credibility of its alumni (people like me) and perhaps your fund investors also.

  • http://wowusuck.blogspot.com/ Byte Me

    Brad feld wants the net to eat brains!

    I can see the applicability for predictive modeling

  • the little buddha

    would the dalai lama approve?

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld bfeld

    It’s in my infinite pile of books to read.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/wiseleo wiseleo

    Can't wait!

    All that spam flooding straight into my brain… oh the rush of it!

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/jdfalk jdfalk

    Reading the foundrygroup post, it sure sounds like this company's aim is to measure our brains for the benefit of advertisers — which is also an interesting idea from science fiction, but corporate access to my brain is not a future I'd look forward to.

    EmSense, as one of the first in this field, will set the standards & de facto best practices that all future ventures will adopt. But will they follow the lead of the email marketing industry, making spam a gigantic industry and generally abusing their customers until absolutely forced to change? Will they follow the example of the social networks, ignoring privacy, security, and even scaling issues, each one making the same mistakes as their predecessors? Or will they put their subjects first, refusing to abuse our brains no matter how much money the voracious advertising industry waves in their faces?

  • Steve Silverstein

    Brad, I have always found your investments to be thoughtful and credible, and I also believed that the Foundry group performs adequate due diligence and exercises duty of care, so I am a little surprised at this one. Emsense makes fraudulent claims on measuring the brain when all they have are some bio-metrics. Their headset measures frontalis muscle activity, and NOT the frontal lobes, especially with two puny sensors. I spoke to a few of my friends in the faculty at MIT, and the Media Lab, and the Neuroscience department, and they are actually appalled and outraged that Emsense would make claims and involve MIT's name claiming tacit support. I have written to Coca Cola asking why they would waste valuable marketing dollars endorsing psuedo-science. Who gets harmed by this – end consumers, Coca Cola, their shareholders, the good name of MIT, the credibility of its alumni (people like me) and perhaps your fund investors also.

  • Byte Me

    Brad feld wants the net to eat brains!

    I can see the applicability for predictive modeling

  • the little buddha

    would the dalai lama approve?

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/kidmercury kidmercury

    have you read the book "the age of spiritual machines" by ray kurzweil? it talks a lot about the man machine merger. i bet you would find it interesting if you have not read it already.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld bfeld

      It’s in my infinite pile of books to read.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld bfeld

      It’s in my infinite pile of books to read.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld bfeld

      It’s in my infinite pile of books to read.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld bfeld

      It’s in my infinite pile of books to read.

  • http://www.replica-china.net replcia handbags

    Mike, great point. This is one of our goals at IntenseDebate – we want to simplify your commenting experience. With this in mind, we enable commenters who have created IntenseDebate accounts to track comments made on a post via RSS readers, including NewsGator.

  • http://www.replica-china.net replcia handbags

    Mike, great point. This is one of our goals at IntenseDebate – we want to simplify your commenting experience. With this in mind, we enable commenters who have created IntenseDebate accounts to track comments made on a post via RSS readers, including NewsGator.

Brad Feld

Hi, I'm Brad Feld, a managing director at Foundry Group who lives in Boulder, Colorado. I invest in software and Internet companies around the US, run marathons and read a lot.

 
 
 
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