Q & A: What does the Facebook acquisition of CTRL-Labs mean for Neurotechnology and Augmented & Virtual Reality?

__________ While sitting at dinner with an unsuspecting friend, my phone blew up with oddly-late messages from fellow neurotechnology comrades. CTRL-Labs announced their impending acquisition by Facebook and integration into Facebook Reality Labs (responsible for Oculus et al.), for enough money to buy my guilt-inducingly-expensive New York coffee for a meager 550,000 years. Woah—so very many questions. I figured I’d share (and consider this an open invitation to reach out and throw in your 100 billion cents-worth). As a quick note before proceeding, aside from its pragmatic communication implications, I don’t much mind whether or not CTRL-Labs and other EMG technologies hold philosophical credence as true neurotechnologies; what matters is that they’re branded as such. It’s a debate that’s been waged elsewhere, so I’ll leave it be! Q: What does this mean for the neurotechnology field? Consumer neurotech Consumer neurotechnology has been properly legitimized: there will now be an entry in the technology vernacular for “that neuro company FB bought.” Neurotech will be a true category, and will probably begin to appear on the websites of the more daring venture capital firms. This is non-trivial: when Facebook purchased Oculus in March of 2014, what followed was a huge influx of investments into AR/VR (the successes of which have admittedly been questionable at best). As many VCs are quick to note, VC is a social dance, and billion-do...
Source: SharpBrains - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Technology AR/VR central nervous system cognition Consumer neurotechnology Ctrl-labs EMG emotion Facebook Facebook Reality Labs medical neurotechnolog Source Type: blogs