Artist Wants to Replace Lost Eyeball With Webcam

A one-eyed San Francisco artist, Tanya Vlach, wants to replace her missing eye with a Web cam. There has even been talk of her shooting a reality TV show using the video eye. "There have been all sorts of cyborgs in science fiction for a long time, and I'm sort of a sci-fi geek, with the advancement of technology, I thought, 'Why not?'" said Vlach. I'm a bit perplexed that the obvious things you'd want in a cyborg eye: range finder, infrared/lowlight vision, and a hypno-ray are not discussed in the article.

Comments

Here's the blog link;

[Eganicus]

http://tanyavlach.wordpress.com/

Tanya wants 3D vision again...

[rtgarden]

Tanya is my pal and we discussed this on facebook. Originally she asked about a webcam, however I pointed out to her that she may be able to regain vision properly if we can match her with the right scientist (who is that guy that helped people see with a chair?). She lost her eye in an auto accident returning from Burningman two years ago, and she would very much like her eye back please. She would also accept infrared, UV and any other type of alternative vision that could go along with this. She is the sort of artist who could genuinely take advantage of this technology, and I seriously hope that we can find someone to work with her.

Visual search

[DrYak]

As soon as she can get that webcam to interface meaningfully with her visual cortex, then I'd say we have a cyborg on our hands.

That's going to be rather difficult. The retina already process the signals.
The signal exiting the eye on the optic nerve are already somewhat multiplexed(*)

Are people really OK with this being called a "cyborg"?!? As I read it, the camera woudln't help her function in any way

Well, although the device wouldn't help her regain stereoscopic vision, the end of the article spoke of converting the video stream into a searchable-database on the phone. Thus "augmenting" her memory.

The ability to finally have a search engine able to answer to the question "Where are my fucking keys ?" grants the idea enough awesomeness points so we can concede the "cyborg" title in recognition.

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(*) For the medical nerds :
The optic nerve, isn't technically a nerve (a structure transmitting raw data from the periphery to the central nervous system) but is much more like a tractus (link between two region of the central nervous system).
The "nerve" function is done by the middle layer of cells in the retina. The top layer process the input, the same way the spine does for inputs from skin for example.
Retina thus process signal (edge detection and other difference comparision) and the result of this process is what is sent down the optical nerve.