Chip manufacturer Intel, is currently spending lots and lots of money researching human brain waves.  Now why would they do this?  Well apparently, they envision a not too distant future that includes controlling things such as cell phones, computers, and even TVs (http://io9.com/5408996/intel-is-developing-brain-implants-so-you-can-cha...).

They hope to accomplish this feat by learning to read peoples' brain waves.  To me this seems a little more far off than the ten year goal of theirs, however, they know better than I.  They are currently attempting to read the brain waves by researching which parts of the brain react to which words.

I think this is quite amazing work.  It does bring to mind thoughts of self aware computers, just like in Terminator or I, Robot, which is slightly unnerving.  I do doubt that it will actually get to that point at any time soon, which leaves me curious to the uses of this technology.  The obvious answer is to bring it to the consumer market to make money, but how else could this type of technology be used?

I am especially curious as to how this could possibly be used in a scholastic environment.  Could this eventually take over computers in the classroom?  Would there even be benefits to something like this?