“It’s not unusual for new technologies to first enter popular consciousness as toys. In the 1st century, Heron of Alexandria invented the aeolipile: a metal ball with curved nozzles sticking out of it, perched on stilts. With water in it, and flame beneath it, the resultant steam would make it spin, whiz, whiz, whiz. Such fun. Nobody understood they were looking at a steam engine. Hence, the Industrial Revolution didn’t start for another 1700 years.”

“Mattel has inked an exclusive multi-year partnership with NeuroSky, the “consumer brain-computer interface technologies” company that birthed Mattel’s much publicized Mindflex game, to develop a new category of games and toys that operate using the power of concentration.”

“The Force, it seems, is not so strong with this one. In the virtual world of a game called Neuroboy, I’m staring out over a lagoon at an exact digital replica of a Star Wars X-wing spaceship submerged in blue water. My task: to lift that virtual object out of its murky depths using not my mouse or keyboard, but instead–à la Luke Skywalker–my thoughts.”