NEWSLETTER: Data on everything -Brain Computer Interfaces and why they matter

Almost exactly a year ago, on September 3rd, I wrote a piece on Neuralink. Now, a year later, Elon Musk has conducted the first demonstration of Neuralink.

What is it? A Brain-Machine Interface (BMI). It’s a chip and system that can read neuronal pulses and can write to the brain by sending electrical signals.

Why is this important for marketers? We need to understand that we are moving into an era where human body and brain signals will become available and traded, similar to how we currently use cookies.

As Alec Ross, author of The Industries of the Future and a member of Julius Baer’s Global Advisory Board, states, “The last trillion-dollar industry was built on computer code. The next one will be built on genetic code.”

Data will be available on EVERYTHING, and brands will have the option to access it—for a price, and with permission.

If you don’t see the connection to marketing, consider this: Amazon just acquired a fitness watch company. Why?

Well, Apple already tracks your heart rate and other stress indicators, and it’s testing ways to measure cortisol spikes and serotonin levels—signals that indicate happiness and stress. These can be used to assess health. Amazon is taking it further; their watch measures vocal tone. That’s right—your voice can now reveal your stress and health levels.

Imagine using that data to understand how people feel, how healthy they are, or even to measure their responses to products, services, ads, politicians, and ideas. This leads us to "insertables," which can measure your neural activity in the clearest way possible to understand your feelings about something.

I created a marketing intelligence system called Data Kinetics that combines several of the most advanced artificial intelligence tools to help you understand society and market segmentation. Its combines social graphs with language analysis, Meta psychological analysis, Societla memes and values shifts and many other more prosaic data sets such as demographics.

The advantage of combing these multiple sources is that it absorbs all of a humans contradiction but finds the path through them. Humans are VERY contradictory in hwat they sya and who they say it to, but there is apattern, and Data Kinetics seeks to embrace thathsoie differences.

I still however hear about brands talking about “sentiment”—you know, that positive/negative/neutral measure, which is one of the most inaccurate ways to gauge social temperature- its one of those ‘singular’ data sets that i think does more damage to understanding humans than helps. I recently saw a big presentation from a tool discussing sentiment for one of the world’s largest food companies. Sentiment applies a positive or negative value to every word, this is a silly way of doing it, as words can mean different things in different contexts. But its simple and so brands use this inaccurate analysis.

Data kinetics uses AI tools to measure contextual resonance - its much more accurate. How does it work? It doesn’t just classify each word as good or bad—like "sick," which can be positive or "it’s really bad for their competitors," which could be a positive message for you. Sentiment analysis might label it as negative, but AI contextualizes the words around the key terms and scores them based on emotions like happiness, fear, and sadness.

This is just one example of how data and information can provide a better understanding of the marketplace and consumer society.

Back to Elon—let’s give a simplified explanation of how it works and what it can do.

The chip is inserted into your skull. As Elon mentions, the skull is about 10 millimeters thick, and the chip is 8 millimeters, so it sits flush, allowing your hair to grow over it without being visible.

It features ultra-thin probes that read your neuronal activity spikes. The intention is so precise that it causes no bleeding—see this image; it’s not hitting any blood vessels.

He demonstrated how he could read the neuronal activity of a pig and predict limb movements by measuring neural activity.

Imagine the data you could gather from that. Data will eventually become privatized—legislation is coming—but brands that create tools providing value to users in exchange for information from the insertable / wearable will dominate their categories. Brands that can rent the data for a while can gain insights into how the brain reacts to media, products, speeches, etc., and create products and campaigns that resonate—there’s no way to fake a neural spike!

This chip will initially be used for quadriplegics, but the plan is to enable us to connect with the internet and enhance our brain’s access to data.

As the depth of understanding of neronal pulses increases we should also see less invasive ways accessing our bodies data, im particularly interested in seeing hwo Smart Glasses implement this tech through measuring body signals, perhaps eye dilation, heat response, moisture etc.

Its a fascinating area with a long way to go, but what we can be sure of is that human reaction data will continue to multiply and grow in importance.