Can we control machines with only our minds?

What if we didn’t have to physically intervene between our thoughts and a machine’s action? Imagine how it would feel to move a formerly paralyzed limb, or the convenience of simply thinking where you want your car to take you, and away it goes. We are close now, with pre-programmed intermediate steps decreasing the time between thought and action. With the current tech boom, it’s not hard to imagine thought-to-action coming to fruition; but HOW and WHEN will we get there? This inquiry identifies the key technologies bringing us closer to a brain-computer interface (BCI) and highlights a few examples for each.