It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Mark Zuckerberg.
by Joe Gorman
First, the Facebook CEO and co-founder announced that the world’s dominant social media platform was introducing technology to counteract incidents of revenge porn on the site, which garnered a warm response from media outlets and Facebook users.
Then came the biggest PR disaster in Facebook history: Steve Stephens, the 37-year-old Cleveland man, murdered the elderly Robert Godwin on camera, fled the scene and committed suicide, streaming the whole thing live on Facebook.
On the eve of the company’s annual developer’s conference, this was a disaster. The ‘Facebook killer’ stunned the world, prompting outrage and calls for an overhaul of Facebook Live.
Zuckerberg took to the stage at F8 with several stunning revelations. After name-checking Godwin and offering his condolences to the family, he got back to the script.
He announced AR technology that will revolutionise the way we use photos online.
He talked about Facebook Spaces, a new virtual reality app which is, according to Zuckerberg, “the future”.
And finally, Zuckerberg confirmed that Facebook is working on mind-reading technology, having hired a plethora of “brain computer interface engineers”.
He has previously admitted his fascination with telepathy, calling it the “ultimate communication technology”, and plans to explore the possibility of developing technology that will allow users to communicate using nothing but their mind.
https://twitter.com/jmorse_/status/854387983503417346
This was met with a frosty reaction on social media, with many branding it as the end of privacy, while some thought the opportunity to ‘enter the brain interface’ sounded like the plot for a new instalment in The Matrix franchise.
Whether or not it is a bad thing is a matter for debate.
The big question is, can Zuckerberg and his mysterious team of brain engineers make it work? And if they do, will it know when I want a chicken fillet roll?
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