So, the best corporate April Fool’s joke I’ve seen today comes from Antares Audio Technologies, makers of the ubiquitous Auto-Tune pitch correcting audio plugin, which is used extensively throughout the recording industry, though some producers and vocalists will deny it. There’s a great article in the New Yorker about the impact Auto-Tune has had on popular music.
Today they announced the upcoming release of Direct Mind Access (DMA) Composition Technology, a faux product that claims to enable composers to “think” their compositions directly into a computer, provided they’ve undergone the requisite cranial implantation of the iLobe USB device.
I’m amused that this is the second fake mind-reading device I’ve encountered in as many days (see my post from this morning for details on the other one). I’m also amused because while these two products are spoofs, there’s clearly a meme around mind-machine interfaces picking up steam out there, which fits quite nicely into Foundry Group’s HCI theme, and is likely influenced by the fact that there are real companies in the market today (including companies like Emotiv, NeuroSky and Foundry Group portfolio company EmSense) building real technology and real products based on EEG technology.