Facebook has purchased technology company, CTRL-labs, who developed a neural monitoring wristband.
“They will be joining our Facebook Reality Labs team where we hope to build this kind of technology, at scale, and get it into consumer products faster,” wrote Vice President of AR and VR Andrew Bosworth in an announcement on his personal Facebook account.
Bosworth says that CTRL-labs’ tech is able to translate signals in your hand muscles into digital signals, which would make it possible to control your device without clicking a mouse or pressing a button: “It captures your intention so you can share a photo with a friend using an imperceptible movement or just by, well, intending to.”
As Bosworth writes, “Technology like this has the potential to open new creative possibilities and reimagine 19th-century inventions in a 21st-century word … It can change the way we connect.”
How can marketers utilize this kind of technology? How can it become more mainstream? What are the implications in regards of connecting brands with their audiences?
If brands can get on this train, they will likely be the ones capable of maximizing the creative potential that neural monitoring tech may be able to offer in the long run.
No financial details were given on the acquisition, but Bloomberg reports Facebook is paying between $500 million and $1 billion for the company.