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MindDrive

Top: Open box full of paper material. Left: Box that had been flattened with a printed image of a first-person view of skiing cut imposed on the shape of a head. Right: Tangled wires attached to a finger attachment, an HDMI port, and a two-pronged electrical cord. Bottom: two CD cases, on showing the disk inside while the other has a printed paper of a finger on its front.

MindDrive, a creation of The Other 90% Technologies Inc, was advertised to be a finger attachment that would allow its user to control their computer with their mind. In reality, this device worked by sensing changes in electrical charges your finger naturally produces through a metal plate located on the bottom of the finger attachment.

Users of the MindDrive would often say that this device can be quite inaccurate or unresponsive most of the time. When it did work, the user would say it truly felt like they were controlling the game with their mind. However, one disgruntled article published in the New York Times suggested that “the game cheats in your favor […] the software keeps you more or less on course.”

One curious note about this particular artifact, however, is the other stuff included in the box. Within the box for the MindDrive itself, there is a pamphlet and some blank postcards for an organization called The NeuroPsience Laboratory. Though the webpage does not currently exist, archives of the organization’s site say that they were dedicated to the study of psychic abilities.

Inside the MindSkier game’s box, there appear to be workout discs and pamphlets used as a part of the NeuroPsience Laboratory’s research.

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“Possible initial projects include […] effects of practice, mood, and/or music on performance using ShapeChanger software”

The NeuroPsience Laboratory’s website, 2004