Marion Boulicault (MIT)
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are implantable devices that allow for computer-mediated interaction between a person’s brain activity and their environment. Examples of devices include those aimed at controlling prosthetic limbs and epilepsy. They work by analyzing brain activity (e.g. to determine an intention to move, or the beginnings of a seizure), and then translate that activity into action (e.g. the movement of a prosthetic arm, or neurostimulation to prevent a seizure).
Given cultural connections between the brain and identity, as well as worries about privacy and ‘neurohacking’ (to name just a few examples), significant attention has been rightly paid to the ethics of BCI use. However, in this poster, I want to raise a question that I contend has yet to receive sufficient attention: what are the philosophical, ethical and political implications of the way we measure BCIs?
There exists a subset of the population who, despite training, are unable to use BCIs. This failure is usually attributed to problematic translation between brain activity and action, e.g. the BCI cannot ‘read’ the brain signals produced by the individual, usually for unknown reasons. BCI researchers call this phenomenon ‘BCI illiteracy’ and report that it affects 15 – 30% of BCI users (Allison and Neuper 2010; Viduarre and Blankertz 2010; Thompson, draft). I argue that the use of ‘BCI illiteracy’ as a metric for success encodes a problematic model of human-technology interaction. In particular, it places responsibility for the ‘failure’ on the individual BCI user, as opposed to the technological system. This can have negative implications for how the BCI user perceives herself in relation to the technology, and on how neuroscientists and engineers understand and engage in their work, and thus on how the technology itself develops. As such, the case of the BCI illiteracy metric illustrates how the instruments and practices of measurement serve as sites for the interaction of science, technology and values.
