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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.
just let the Borg come to 0, 0, 1 and she'll have her replacement eye in no time.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Infrared and rangefinder is good, but I want the targeting crosshairs.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
YES! A brand new prank avenue! Jab a flashdrive in your buddy's brain and he cannot escape the goatse [no link, for humanitarian reasons]. What has been seen can never be unseen!
-=Bang Bang=-
Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One
...as long as the world doesn't look like this.
Who would want a web-cam for an eye anyway? I mean, seriously, it's about 1fps, shitty resolution, terrible image, etc.
If I was paying for a new eye, I'd probably invest more than fifty bucks on it.
Sorry, I just can't read this article without thinking about G'Kar and what he spies with his little eye.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"I wonder what's going on down the hall?"
*Fwoomp*
FTA:
"It is possible to build a wireless camera with the dimensions of the eyeball,"
Want said the camera, which would be encased in Vlach's prosthesis to avoid moisture, could link wirelessly to a smart phone.
The smart phone could send power to the camera wirelessly and relay the camera's video feed by cell phone network to another person,
The effects of cellphone emissions are as yet unproven to be harmful or not harmful. But I'd think putting the rad source right next to your brain, without even the skull material as a blocker, would be a pretty bad idea.
But, if she wants to be the guinea pig...go for it.
Who knows...she may spontaneously sprout a 3rd eye.
Imagine cracking the encryption (if any) in the wireless feed from the eye to the receiver. Instant Ghost in the Shell
she'll never be admitted into a movie-theatre again !!!
"im sorry ma'am ... is that a recording device in your eye socket ? "
BANNED !!!
...a Logitech Trackball instead?
Sure, it'd be quite useless, but it'd still rock somehow. No?
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
She could have the camera transmit it's images to a screen positioned over her good eye so she could see what was going on.
http://tanyavlach.wordpress.com/
I have a prostheic eye (wood, not glass - don't ask).
Needless to say, I had a difficult time dating. No girl would ever date me because of my wooden eye. There was one girl, who was OK looking, except she had larger than average ears. So I decided to ask her out. She didn't date much, so she was excited to go out. Even with me! Alas it was not to be.
I asked her, "Would you like to go to the dance Friday night?" She retorts, "Would I! Would I!" Well enough was enough. I tell her, "Forget it! I don't go around calling you Big Ears!"
But, if she wants to be the guinea pig...go for it.
I suspect my HMO would describe the rig as an unlicensed - untested - modification to the prosthesis, with all the risk of infection and other complications that implies - and they wouldn't want any part of it.
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.
Solution: Capture at twice the output resolution (eg, 1600x1200 for an 800x600 video), then correct jitter by moving the video window within the capture frame and using AI to determine whether something is jitter or intentional frame movement (eg. does the new direction return to near the old one within some time limit, is the camera focusing on an object I should be locking on to, does the new position of the capture frame force a static video frame outside of the capture frame, etc). Basically similar to the peripheral vision, except videos only have discrete capturing (either something's shown or it isn't, using various filters on the outskirting pixels looks strange) instead of continually diminishing awareness on the peripherals.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Nah,you're thinking WAY too small there buddy! What you do is wait until they are asleep,and THEN plug in a flash drive,but not with the wussy Goatse,but with 2G1C on infinite loop! Imagine the horror of having THAT played over and over in your dreamscape!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
--
(*) 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.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]