Wire

A company called Cyberkinetics has developed a true neural interface device, which they are calling BrainGate. It is currently in clinical trials.

In brief, it is a chip implanted directly into the motor center of the brain, which translates neural impulses into electronic signals. (Click on the embedded link under "platform technology" in the article for a more detailed explanation, as well as a photo of the little bugger.) Essentially, it allows you to control your computer by thought alone.

For lack of more literate commentary, that's just wicked cool.

Of course, like any radically new technology, it has the potential to create both enormous benefit and incalculable harm. While the core technology could be used, as in the current trial, to re-enable quadrapalegics, it could also be abused. Larry Niven, in his 1970 book Ringworld, described something called a "wire"--basically just a chip implanted into the pleasure center of the brain. It trickles in minute electrical charges to stimulate massive endorphin rushes--100% pure pleasure. On the addictiveness scale, it would make heroin seem like caffeine.

Cybernetics are coming on fast, for better and for worse. If someone can abuse a technology, they will abuse it. It's virtually a natural law. But we'll just have to take the bad with the good, because in the other direction lies Ludditism--and that's not an option.