Cortical Cybernetic Implants

Floody writes "Wired is running a story with amazing cyberpunk "wow factor." Implanted visual cortex stimulation, complete with "percutaneous pedestal"; a metal jack installed directly into the skull. Where can I get a night vision enhancement module for this with HUD and distance finder?" We've posted a couple of previous stories about Dobelle and his work on bionic eyes, but this one has more details: one frame per second, $100,000. Wow.

Comments

I'm waiting for...

[MarvinMouse]

when I can sit down at a desk with maybe just a keyboard, and plug in the sound screen and everything directly into my head.

Sound would be amazing if they could get the entire range (including that which is naturally lost after childhood) to work. Imagine hearing music absolutely perfectly clear. Wouldn't that be awesome. :-)

And screen would be even better. Considering I have contacts as is, so the screen isn't 100% clear, just good enough.

Imagine if they could have the screen show up with clarity beyond that of 20/20 or even 20/10 . Movies where everything is perfectly clear. :-)

If scientists were to actually work on ways to "jack" ourselves in. There are so many things we could do with it. Even just the sheer speed increase of data entry if we just had to think about it.

The possiblities are endless...

Awesome

[grmoc]

Now the question that would be interesting...

What happens with copyright laws when people have these (types of) implants in them?
If you can record, verbatim, (i.e. through the use of some static ram, etc) what you see as a "perfect" digital copy, then would that be copyright infringment? Is the implant going to be considered the same as other (external) hardware?

Its a sticky issue, imho- Will the copyright holder "rights" force us to unlearn what we have learned because they have a patent or copyright on the idea? What happens when the electronic thought ends up being the same as normal "human" thought because the devices are a part of us?

I imagine that "our" lawmakers havn't even considered considering such a thing. The lack of foresight isn't suprising, but it is disheartening.

-R

Re:Awesome

[Winged Cat]

The law as it currently stands is that, once they enter your brain, the perceptions are your inviolable IP. Of course, that's mainly because sharing thoughts and ideas had notably less than 100% fidelity.

Which makes for an interesting side-trip: what happens if, instead of attending world class universities and studying, one can just download and install a few files from reputable universities' Web sites in order to grok, say, physics just (or at least nearly) as well as the best physicists? But that requires hacking into the memories, which the subject of this article only begins to touch on.

Back on topic, I would suspect that, as with the fact of file sharing today, the laws will be widely ignored in practice if they would otherwise inconvenience the user. You could have people getting wired eyes so that whatever they see can be admitted as court evidence (which some undercover cops, to my knowledge, would gladly give their right arms for...and even more gladly give up just one or two body parts that get working artificial replacements as part of the deal). Many military uses also spring to mind. And then there's the art perspective of using yourself as a camera. All this would make the IP concerns seem trivial, especially if artificial eyes entered into wide use before the IP industry thought to purchase restrictive legistlation.

How beneficial?

[z0ot]

I would be interested in knowing how beneficial this would be across different types of blindness. Patient Alpha grew up with sight (two words - safety goggles) and one can presume he knew how the world was supposed to 'look' prior to decoding the phosphenes.
Would a person born blind be able to use this technology? If so, better or worse than a patient who had sight? On the one hand, a person born blind may not have any preconcieved notions about how the world is supposed to look and may be better at interpreting the phosphenes as the 'real world'. On the other hand, I wonder if the phosphenes would be interpretable at all to a visual cortex that has never learned how to see.

Something I wonder about...

[cr0sh]

I read the article all the way through. Toward the end of the article, the reporter comments on wearing a Sony Glasstron hooked up to an artificial vision system that shows a 32x32 matrix of what he is "seeing" through a camera, to get an idea of how such a system would work in the future.

At first, he is shown a lower res image (lower than 32x32) - he then is upgraded to 32x32 and asked if he can see anything. He can see blobs of color and such - but then suddenly, he says things "resolve", and he can see things more clearly. He asked if they upped the res again, and they responded "No", that his brain was re-learning the "see" the new image.

Now, I don't know what kind of image processing software and such they were using (for all I know it may be some simple image mosaic tiling software like is used to mask peoples faces on TV), but I wonder how "sharp" or well defined the image he saw was? Further I wonder if you did look at one of those mosaic images on a TV in the right conditions (ie, through an HMD with no outside light penetrating like the reporter wore), if the res would "pop up", and you could see who the real person was?

Also, this effect seems real similar to what was noted a long time ago back when VR was just getting started (early 90's), in that when using a low-res HMD (320x200 or less pixels), you had to "learn" to "look past" the pixels, and the image would slowly become clearer.

So, in the area of VR HMD research, I am wondering if resolution really matters at all, or if there is a minimum resolution you can give the eyes, and let the brain fill in the rest? If this is really the case, then wide FOV HMDs, using lower-res displays and some training (so the brain can learn to "see" in one of these things) could possibily bring VR back in the limelight.

Anybody have any thoughts or comments on this?

Re:Something I wonder about...

[kris_lang]

Resolution really matters, but we (humans) are capable of resolving "sub-pixel" features by interpolation. The retinal cones are spaced at least 1-minute-of-arc apart, however we are able to accurately place a vernier line to within 1/10 of a minute of arc. This is probably done in a way that is the converse of anti-aliasing in image processing: you can create non-jagged edges by using intermediate gray scales to imply curves.

So even with 32 x 32 pixel images, if we are allowed to scan slowly across an image, we can see sub-pixel elements as they average across pixel areas and we see finer grain changes in intensity which our brain can infer is due to sub pixel features.