News of the cool: Mindball
Written by: Beck
Thanks to Mrs. Dudley for emailing me
this link.
Isaac Asimov, in his book
Second Foundation, may have been the first person to think up the nifty sci-fi idea of computers that could be controlled directly from the mind, requiring no messy keyboards or mice (literally messy--according to one friend, the average computer keyboard has more germs than the average toilet seat. Try not to think about it too hard). One step at a time, the wild imaginings of science-fiction writers are coming true.
The Swedish startup company Interactive Productline has invented a game (yours for the low price of $19,000!) in which two players compete to score goals using nothing but their brain waves.
Mindball is played on a 4-foot-long table by two people with electrodes taped to their foreheads. These biosensors detect alpha and theta brain waves--generated during intense concentration and deep relaxation--and correspondingly instruct a computer inside the table to move a rubber-coated steel ball via a magnetic sleigh below the surface.
The object is to roll the ball from the center spot into your opponent's end zone. The more focused and relaxed you are, counterintuitively, the faster you win. Competitiveness and aggression are counterproductive. Strategy, decision making, and hand-eye coordination count for nothing. "You compete by being calm--a complete contradiction," says Hannell. In Mindball, you attack by relaxing even more, and you react by not reacting.
Speaking as a person who rivals
The Dude for pure laziness, I think I've finally found a professional sport I can well and truly excel at. And of course, this couldn't be a cool new technology article without a random, inadvertently insulting comment about the Swedes.
So do the laws of Mindball apply to business competition? Do we win by not competing? And if so, is Sweden perhaps the next great economic power?