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Aussie Government Offers $40M To Build a Bionic Eye
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government is keen to replicate the success of the Cochlear Implant (bionic ear) by throwing AU$50M (US$40M) of funding at the development of a bionic eye. Bionic eyes have been trialed with some success in the UK — with recipients able to detect senses of shape and space, but very little detail."
$40 million USD over 4 years is tiny! Wouldn't it be better to structure it as some sort of X-prize or some sort of incentive system predicated on success? I know it's hard to convince people to pop in a bionic eye so some stranger can tweak it but coming up with some parameters that could be objectively measured without sticking it into someone's body might be doable. X-prize type challenges can trigger research efforts in multiples of the actual prize itself.
X-prize or not, $40 million USD over 4 years is not going to go very far.
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It's already possible to do really low quality artificial sight.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Seeing+Tongue-a078681631
As I see it, the main hurdle is just getting a eye hooked up with a decent amount of bandwidth (there are issues with power supply, nonrejection, et cetera, but those seem less difficult). The human brain is really good at creating interpreters for new inputs.
I disagree. A bionic eye is worth much more than a car that gets 100mpg.
/day.
1) Economical diesel cars already get close to that, so if car owners become really interested, it will be built without the need of a prize. If you go pure biodiesel you might even be able to meet the 200g/mile emissions requirement if it is a "net calculation".
2) A car that gets 100mpg from fossil fuels might end up a mere curiosity if we ever shift big time from fossil fuels to something else other than biofuels.
In contrast a working bionic eye is going to be useful for as long as humans (or other similar creatures) want eyes.
An efficient biofuel car is useful, but it by itself will not deal with the problem of starving out the poor - because as long as the rich are many times richer than the numerous poor, they can afford to pay a lot more to feed their cars so they wouldn't feel the pressure. It would likely need external regulation to make them care.
Here's some rough math:
Recommended energy per person: 2000 kcal = 8.36 megajoules
1 litre of vegetable oil = 34MJ - or about the daily energy allowance for 4 people.
1 litre of vegetable => approximately USD1.
How much would a rich (e.g. anyone who can afford a car) person be willing to pay per day to feed his car? USD2? If he can afford to pay more than 8 poor people, the 8 poor people are going to get less food assuming we don't keep converting forests to farmland.