2. Team Amadeus
CONTENTS
CONSUMER INSIGHT – IMPACT INTENSIFICATION MAP..................................................................................... 2
TECHNOLOGY POSSIBILITY: DISRUPTION AMPLIFICATION MAP ......................................................................... 3
OPPORTUNITY : MARKET MAXIMIZATION MAP ................................................................................................. 4
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................ 5
EXPERIENCE ANYTHING - DOWNLOAD A TWO-WEEK VACATION IN TWO MINUTES ....................................... 5
WIRELESS TRANSFER - COMMUNICATING AT THE SPEED OF THOUGHT ......................................................... 6
CHANGE YOUR BODY WITH YOUR BRAIN – EYESIGHT .................................................................................... 7
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6. Team Amadeus
INTRODUCTION
Imagine connecting a USB to your brain and experiencing a two-week vacation in two
minutes. Imagine connecting your brain to someone else's brain and communicating at the
speed of thought. Imagine training a blind person's brain to repair optical nerves and
muscles, enabling them to see. These are all possibilities that exist beyond the current
frontiers of neuroscience. Our project is about the "connected brain" – a brain that is
connected through digital processing technology to external devices that provide alternative
sources of knowledge, experience and sensation. Let's explore the human impulses and
instincts that signal a future for the connected brain.
EXPERIENCE ANYTHING - DOWNLOAD A TWO-WEEK VACATION IN TWO MINUTES
A defining feature of culture in the twentieth century, which made that century different from
any other period in history, was the trend towards multi-sensory immersion in settings that
are, quite literally, a figment of our imagination. Humans have often sought different ways to
transcend the "reality" of their everyday lives, whether through literature, music or
intoxication. What defined culture in the twentieth century, however, was the deliberate
creation of multi-sensory immersion. An early example of this was the movie, which
provided a way for people to escape from the demands of their lives for a few hours,
experiencing the thoughts and feelings of others. Later in the century, it became evident
through video games that humans were interested in doing more than escaping to a new
reality; they wanted to interact with it and play with it, as if they were children. The
development of video games coincided with another major trend of the century, which
through the democratization of jet travel in the 1960s, enabled more and more humans to
experience life beyond the arbitrary limits suggested by their birthplace or education.
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7. Team Amadeus
Our future, where people can download a two-week vacation to their brain and experience it
in two minutes, draws on the increasingly strong signals of human behaviour outlined above:
the desire to explore alternative realities through viewing and interaction; and the desire to
travel and explore the world. This future is highly disruptive to traditional businesses like
airlines, hotels and car rental companies. It creates enormous opportunities for creators of
original content, in a network business where vacations are sold through a platform that is
constantly shaped and re-defined by users. Just like the iTunes store, this provides enormous
first-mover and lock-in advantages for a company that can create and cost-effectively deliver
entertainment in the "experience economy" of the new millennium.
WIRELESS TRANSFER - COMMUNICATING AT THE SPEED OF THOUGHT
From the "field telephones" used in the First World War to the walkie-talkies of the 1950s to
the briefcase-sized portable phones of the 1980s, we have seen an increasing shift of mobile
communication from military to industrial, commercial and finally personal use. Mobile
phones are currently a $100 billion global market (Data monitor, 2006), a market bigger than
the GDP of say Morocco or Slovakia, created in less than a generation. Yet mobile phones
have their limits, which in terms of human behaviour, are more fundamental than dropped
calls or weak reception. The limit is to do with humans' ability to comprehend spoken
information. Research from cognitive psychologists suggests that we speak at 200 words per
minute; but we can process auditory information at anywhere from 300-500 words per minute
(source: Melanie Carr, "Leadership from the Inside Out"). In other words, we could increase
our ability to process and understand information by a multiple of 1.5 to 2.5, if we could
remove the "gravitational pull" of speech.
Our future involves brain-to-brain communication. Just as Tim Berners-Lee invented the
world-wide web and Mark Andresen invented a way for different computers to "see" other
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8. Team Amadeus
computers, so we will apply our thinking to developing a device/protocol for one human to
connect their brain to another human. We see this as the next development of mobile
telephony, which is a powerful signal of the human need to communicate as naturally as
possible. We will remove the "gravitational pull" of speech, enabling not just real-time
communication but also real-time comprehension.
CHANGE YOUR BODY WITH YOUR BRAIN – EYESIGHT
The ability to see is a defining part of being human. Let's try a thought experiment, where
you could live X years in perfect health with normal vision; or 10 years in perfect health
except that you're blind (source: Stein et al. Br J Ophthalmol. 2003; 87: 8-12).
a) X years in perfect health - normal vision.
b) 10 years in perfect health - except that you're blind (vision of 20/200 or worse).
Write down what "X" would make option A and B approximately equal for you (of course X
must be less than 10). Utility of being blind = X/10.
If you ask sighted people, the mean utility of being blind is 0.85.
If you ask blind people, the mean utility of being blind is 0.56.
Alternatively, blind people who expect to live another 10 years would give up almost four
and a half years of their life to be able to see. Think about this for a moment. How many
years of your life would you give up to have an iPhone? An iPod? Compared to the
consumption of products, services and experiences, the experience of being human – visio
ergo sum – places a high claim on our "life capital".
Our future is about training the brain through software to re-program functions and processes
in the body. This would include repairing optical nerves and muscles in the eyes, enabling
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9. Team Amadeus
blind or visually impaired people to experience close-to-normal vision. We would develop
different modes of this solution, with a low-tech version for the developing countries where
most of the world's blind people live; and a high-tech version more focused on myopic,
hypermetric or astigmatic people in developing countries. Disrupted by this innovation
would be several multi-billion dollar industries such as eyeglass manufacturing, contact lens
manufacturing and LASIK surgery.
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