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Stevie Wonder to Implant Eye Chip?
chocko sent us an article about Stevie Wonder's Eye Chip. Now normally a Stevie Wonder story probably wouldn't make it on Slashdot, but this is actually about him implanting a chip into his eye in order to try to gain some of his sight back. I just thought that was kinda cool. Update: 12/04 12:02 by H :Thanks to Chris Griffin for updating the story.
Injured geek wins against Mattel, Mattel still retaliates!
There is a move out on video with Val Kilmer sp?. The story is about a guy who could see as a child but lost his sight due to an illness. He under went surgery and regained his sight, but it was very tough on him. It was not as simple as returning his sight, his brain had to learn how to interperate the signals. In the credits after the movie it stated the movie was based on a true story and the guy is currently living in the Atlanta area. If any one knows the title please post it so others can watch it. It could parallel what Stevie might go through.
the chip is coming out as said in the CNN article
Actually, there was a discussion about this on Slashdot a while back... if I recall correctly, someone said that the human eye's resolution is actually relatively low (and it can't really be measured in pixels), but it's constantly darting back and forth so you see a large image, but only a small area of it is in focus. I believe the discussion was in an Ask Slashdot, but my (admittedly cursory) searches didn't bring up anything. Maybe I just imagined it...
My only question is that now that they are going to start using technology more in medical proceedures, are the costs going to drop rapidly like computer/tech hardware? Or will it remain relitively consistant as it has?
The vast majority of people who consider themselves blind have SOME sort of vision. Usually its just the ability to see blobs of color, sometimes its more or less. I don't recall too well what caused his blindness, but if it was because he was a preemie, then it is probably was eye damage (because his brain was most likely fully developed in the senses) which blinded him. It wouldn't surprise me that he could see some things, like a lightbulb or the sun.
-bugg
But do they have one with 1024x768x32 resolution that is in the form of a remote controlled contact lens? I could really use one for a wearable computer.
Yeah, about 5 years. CCD's are improving rapidly, because research is now funded by the popularity of digital cameras in the domestic market.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
If Stevie gets his sight back, he's going to kill whoever has been dressing him all these years :)
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Fock yoU! I wrote that piece. Don't take credit for my AC posts.
Well there are some other choices
Do you have better ideas? Do they still seem better if we replace "medical technology" with "car technology", or "lawn care"?
I dont think that a ccd camera with each pixel connected to a nerve in the optic cord would work because your retina actualy has done a bunch of computation before the image is passed on. Your eye actualy finds edges at different orientations and light areas surrounded by dark areas. It does more than that, but I dont have any examples to give. If you could do those computations and then feed the resulting signal to the brain you would have a much better chance of it learning to see again.
I'm not sure that's right. Feature detection (eg detection of edges, junctions etc) is done in the primary visual cortex. The cortex is composed of groups of about 100 "pyramidal" neurons wired together into narrow bundles, sometimes called minicolumns. Approximately 100 of these minicolumns are grouped together into a "macrocolumn" (in the visual cortex sometimes the term "ocular dominance column" is used).
Each macrocolumn is wired up to a specific spot on the retina, so that it might be regarded as processing a single pixel. In this way the entire visual field is mapped onto the surface of the back of the brain with relatively little distortion (feed radioactive glucose to a monkey, get him to look at a black-and-white geometric pattern while exposing the back of his head to photographic film, and you'll see the pattern he is looking at etched directly onto the surface of his brain!).
Now, within a given macrocolumn, each minicolumn is responsible for detection of a specific low-level feature at the co-ordinate "owned" by the macrocolumn to which it belongs. The features detected at this level are "edges" (sharp contrast gradients) in a complete range of different orientations, with a resolution of a couple of degrees.
Recognition of features such as vertical lines is accomplished by having the "vertical edge" minicolumns in adjacent macrocolumns connected to each other, and to specific multipolar neurons deeper in the cortex, which sum their inputs. So if the vertical edge detectors are stimulated in half a dozen macrocolumns all arranged (in terms of neural topology) in a straight line, these will all stimulate the higher-order neurons which code for a vertical line at those coordinates.
The processing that occurs in the retina owing to interconnection of rods and cones only involves smearing out the stimulus to near neighbours. I think this is part of the scanning mechanism involves in the eye's oscillation of approx. 10hz (I'm not referring to saccadic movement).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Palm devices (specificly the Palm VII or a standard Palm coupled with some form of networking) are getting very close to this. There are also now devices that are similar in concept, just not size. Wireless color touchscreen LCDs that interface with their base (I think there was one that was an x server), allowing many fun things like browsing slashdot from the comfort of your bathroom :-) (or even better, reading slashdot at the breakfast table instead of the stadard flat, dead trees)
The thing that makes science fiction like Star Trek what it is, is the speculation and extrapolation about our future and the future of technology. We shouldn't be too surprised when someone gets it right, but it sure is cool to see a technology progress out of fiction into reality.
...this post has been up how long? And we've yet to see a reference to Geordi LaForge?
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
will wonders never cease?
I trust my eye chip to Linux, as well as my ass chip.
Actually, I haven't heard it yet. Tell us.
Thanks to BBC News Online, here.
Apparently the system only has 25 pixels - presumably in a 5x5 square. While such 'vision' will be a vast improvement over nothing, it sounds like the system is still in its early stages and is nowhere near mimicing conventional sight. It's a bit like the early cochlear implants in a way.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
That's right. Now he can see the stuff he's bumping into and tripping over.
There was a guy who had corneal replacement when he was middle aged. He could see when he was very young, but lost his sight later. So they did the corneal transplant and he could see, but it wasen't all perfect. His depth perception was ALL messed up. At the hospital on the 5th floor or higher he looked out the window and was asked what the distance was. He said "not far" remarking that he thought he could touch the ground with his hand. Soo the brain had to readjust. Eventually this guy (mabye not same guy movie is based off of) got really depressed. He sat in his house and was disgusted with how disorderly and dirty everything was. He had envisioned it all being perfect while being blind. He eventually committed suicide.
I really hope Stevie Wonder's procedure works well and that he regains some sight. Good luck and God bless dude.
Why stumble blindly when you can stumble insightfully?
Stevie Wonder has a condition called Retinitis_pigmentosa. More info on the condition can be found here.
Its a condition that affects the retina, the back of the eye where the optical nerves lie.
Here's some more info and a picture of an affected retina.
Now normally I wouldn't expect any story about musicians to be regular fare for /., but every now and then we get some silly story about some yahoo DJ Shadow or some moonie from the Who or some other band, and there is no such inane put-down.
De gustibus non est disputandem and all that, but remember that it's hard to narrow down any aspect of the /. crowd, least of all musical tastes.
Sheesh!
--Uche
"What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross" -- E.P.
I don't think Rob was necessarily dissing Stevie, /.er-Stevie fans, though they're probably a little long in the tooth. Sorry about the hard returns, Lynx doesn't word wrap the text entry field.
just suggesting that there is little overlap between
Slashdot readers and Stevie Wonder fans. But he may
be wrong about this as well: I had a CS professor
who is probably in his early 50s now, who was this
total Jazz Geek. And, although I didn't get into
specifics, I imagine his tastes were closer to
Weather Report than to, say Pharoah Sanders. Stevie
Wonder's early 70s work is very fusion/modal influenced,
so there are possibly a fair number of
If you don't believe me, check out the mySQL book from O'Reilly. The example database is a record collection, and it's all Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, etc.
PLEASE... racist, joke deleted.... Get over yourself. Since when does circumstantial humour == racism.
This just wouldn't be the same world with a Stevie Wonder who can see...We can't make the "Have you seen Stevie Wonder's new piano..." joke anymore!
*Life is too serious to be taken too seriously.*
An article I read on this subject said that he will not gain any GOOD eyesight because of this chip implant. He will be able to see his piano (so much for that joke *sight* :o) but he will not be able to read normal text. He will only be able to make out larger clearer shapes. It dosen`t sound to me as if this will be able to help you out that much directly on you programming, but it is nevertheless a great breakthrough, and in the future it can only get better. Maby someday we will be able to create systems that can see as good as our original eyes, and communicate properly with our brain, giving the blind the posibility to see again!
Good luck!
-PsI®
"Today We Make The Legensds Of Tomorow" (-Me) Magister Mundi Sum!
.
What happend to the word "bionic" is it politically incorrect and I am just out of it?
Chip in his eye sounds like a cross of "Chip on his shoulder" and "Plank/speck in his eye."
That might produce ppl that lie in bed all day with a headset and do nothing but play quake, what with all them digital interfaces to the senses. One cool thing -- just think, your audio perception will no longer be limited by having to conduct sound through air. Sign me up!
-S
but I'd really like some more info., like an in-depth analysis of how the optical system works; especially how it interfaces with the optic nerve.
"A good conspiracy is an unprovable one." -Conspiracy Theory
Has anyone considered that in the near future, these chips could be modified to transmit what you are looking at? Or if they design a chip for the deaf, what you are listening to? They could make it really attractive offering perfect vision in any lighting condition and excellent hearing anywhere, making everyone want to have one of these implanted.
If we look at the new Micro-Dust. It is the size of a dust particle, but has radio transmitters in it. Why couldn't they do the same with these vision chips?
We have all seen how the government wants to know everything we do. Just a thought.
I'm not sure I'd want to try this, but I'm not surprised he is.
It sounds ridiculous, but there are still people in the "deaf culture" who oppose cochlear implants to mimic/restore hearing.. (see here, for instance, and this article as well)
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
You mean there was a time when Stevie Wonder
wasn't blind? How 'bout that? I just assumed
that he had always been blind. Mark me offtopic.
I think the implant design has something to do with stimulating the optical nerve in a manner opposite of a CCD. I'm not sure about colors being visible, but I am sure for a blind person that even seeing objects in monochrome is a blessing indeed. They will still not be able to drive a car, but they may enjoy a greater standard of independent living.
--
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
Some of us actually look forward to a time when we can upgrade these pathetic, fragile meat bodies. I'm just saddened that it is not likely to happen before I'm dead.
And 640K is about enough for anybody.
And the integrated circuit is useless.
And We can close down the patent office because everything has already been invented. This actually WAS argued in congress, IIRC, in the late 19th century.
Why do you think that? This research will give us a "permanent" eye replacement within 10 years or so, and "upgrades" within 6 months after that. There is also research about a neural interface that we will implement also within 10-15 years. see Neural computing discussion Granted, this research is preliminary, but the speed of these announcements is astounding.
Unless you're already eighty, you will definately see industrial, and possibly commercial, cybournetic implants within your lifetime.
_______________________________
I'm worried that since he was not born w/ sight (at least I think), how would he react ? Vision would be so alien to him, that I don't know if he could adapt to it at his age. The brain hard-wires most of its connections early in life, with decreasing plasticity as the years go by..
How come I can only think of one quote when I think of this actually happening with Stevie.
"Mr. Laforge to the bridge"
Nothing against him, but if he wears anything like in Star Trek, I'm going to start wearing a lead apron around town.
With Star Trek issues,
Matthew
sortakinda.ca | canadian paraphrasing.
This story goes a lot more in depth. Click here The one on Zdnet was only a few sentences. This one is a lot longer trust me.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
Stevie Wonder, born Stevland Morris, was a premature baby. Medical treatment in those early days left him blind. I believe in involved oxygen exposure, but it may have been light exposure or something else.
let me take you down because I am going to
strawberry fields nothing is real
and stevie wonder and see there it is a place where you can never understand
As the article says, Mr. Wonder is haveing an chip placed in his eye. What it doesn't say is that hundreds more will soon follow. Mr. Wonder will soon have the largest Beowulf cluster in human history. This will lead to a his quick mutiny of the wolrds governing bodies He''ll be able to monitor everyones CD players and tell what they His dictatorship will rise to stop all those who don't like his music!!!
This, however, is not what worries me.
After he conquers the world he'll appoint Kathy Lee Gifford as his vice dictator...
Be afraid, be very afraid....
Click here to read too much about my personal life
I saw on TV that hey have decided tyhat he is NOT a good canidate for the surgery... Some other guy is gonna get it...
what does IIRC stand for? I apologize in advance for my ignorace of 4 letter acronyms.
he can finally join the world of the seeing! :P i dont know how he's gonna react, but its going to be a huge shock to him to see what he looks like and what other people look like! maybe he can see what he's playing now.
-seckzi
Nope, he's right, and you left out everything below the cerebrum.
;-)
The retina has some significant processing power of it's own--in fact, it is often used as a benchmark for measuring the brain's overall processing capabilities (wrongly, IMO, but that's not relevant). Both edge and movement detection are performed in the rear-most layer of the retina as a pre-processing step before the information is moved up the optic nerve.
The optic nerve feeds into the LGN (the expanded form of which is difficult to spell), which performs a great deal of processing in it's own right--it was, after all, the primary visual system for millions of years--including further (much more refined) edge and movement detection, some object recognition, attention, etc.
The result of that is forwarded to the cortex for the final processing we all know and love, which extends the capabilities of the retina and LGN greatly. However, by that stage the input has virtually no resemblance to the output from the retina, having been thoroughly digested by the lower visual systems. (One further interesting tidbit: the descending pathways, from the cortex to the LGN, have 10x the capacity of the ascending pathways. Make of that what you will.)
(Incidentally, there are a number of us who are trying to combat cerebral chauvinism in neuroscience, and you aren't helping
I've seen a number of interviews with him, and watched him play live, and the thing that always impresses me is how much this guy loves music. You know that joyous expression that little kids [and mabey hackers too{grin}] have when they get a bright, shiny new toy to play with? Well, that is the expression that Stevie Wonder has when he plays. Most of us loose that expression, through growing up and other's reactions, I hope that with regaining his sight, Stevie doesn't loose his.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
implanting a chip into his eye in
order to try to gain some of his sight back.
I thought he was always blind.
But it is kinda cool.
WHERE IS A CURRENT VERSION OF THE SLASHDOT SOURCE? HYPOCRITES!!!
Excessive oxygen leads to derranged development of the blood vessels in the retina of a premature infant. If there is too much overgrowth of vessels, blindness occurs. Technically, it's called Retinopathy of Prematurity.
"Perhaps MS with IBM and HP can make their own , IT_SPACE_CORP, and launch 10 missions a year and sell all the results and make a profit faster than nasa can."
Yeah, Then the mars-probes will get a BSOD an average of 257.9 times on the time getting there.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. :-)
On a more serious note, while this would be good stuff for the handicapped, it has the potential to be abused. It'd kinda be like cosmetic surgery...you don't really need it, but some people aren't happy with what they're born with, or something along those lines.
It'd give BSOD a whole new meaning. :-)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
A great procedure that I am sure, although apparently attempted on 15 other people. (and I am not sure about the success rate). I heard that Stevie Wonder's sight was tooo far damaged for this procedure... unfortunate for him.
Looking at a video of himself-- "Damn! Why didn't you tell me I swung my head around like a fool"
I want to be able to see into Infra-red. I hope they design upgradibility into the cybernetic products though, so I can move to the latest model on a regular basis. It'd be a drag to upgrade to infrared now and then not be able to upgrade to 4D accelerated HDvision later.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually he did have eyesight at an early age. He wasn't born blind. Hrmm I forget when he lost it.. I believe it was around 2 or 5 or something but he did have eyesight at one point
well THAT was in poor taste, and NOT funny either.
A lot of people have missed this, but if you look at the link in the other article, the chip doesn't stay in.
:)
It isn't some kind of artificial vision replacement. Rather, AFAICT, it just stimulates the nerves to the point where they remember how to see again. Then the chip is removed.
Sorry. No Star Trek story here. You can go.
(however, the Star Trek technology might be next. I seem to remember a story about constructing an image by reading the neurons in a cat, or something. It worked, but the picture was lower res.
I think it'd be awesome if I could replace or add, say, a thermal view of my surroundings, or a clock... It'd involve being able to add, replace or superimpose "images" in the stream of data from the eyes to the brain. Of course, goggles would be a *lot* easier.
---
pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Professor Graeme Clark developed the bionic ear, also called the Cochlear Implant, in the 1970s.
My wife has one of these. With tiny electrodes planted in her cochlea, a woman who without it would have trouble hearing a 747 landing on her can hear at a pretty serviceable level.
The Washington Post has an interesting article about rich vs. poor medicine, with the rich being U.S. pharmaceutical companies and the poor being Africans with AIDS. African countries could manufacture AIDS treatment drugs for much cheaper than they could buy them from U.S. companies, but doing so would subject them to sanctions. So "closed-source" medicine lets people die who we might save. (On the other hand, without the money from sales the drugs probably not have been developed yet, so not allowing medicines to be patented might mean even more people die.)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I'm a fairly new fan of Stevie Wonder. My opinion of him and his music rose dramatically after seeing a PBS program about Songs in the Key of Life. Musicians and others who helped make the album reunited, and the show chronicled it. It was wonderful.
His music varies quite a bit in quality. Some of the songs, especially the pop ballads, do not impress me. They have hooks and little else along with unmemorable lyrics. The good songs are another matter.
The good songs are quite complex. Once watching the show and seeing how much effort went into composition, performance and production of some songs, I started listening more closely. The good ones have rhythm and good themes (hooks). They also have variations, counter rhythms and counter melodies.
The music also carefully incorporates many sources. He uses gospel choirs, Hare Krishnas, horns, harps and more along with the usual pop music instruments.
The playing is impressive. On the PBS program, he talked about recording. The early synthesizers were monophonic or only slightly polyphonic. He multitracked. In addition, Stevie Wonder likes to bend notes. Even with a polyphonic keyboard, bending changes different notes in different ways. He went back to multitracking. He has a talent for incorporating technological innovations to create the music.
Finally, there are the lyrics. Most are nothing complicated, not high poetry. They are sincere. Stevie Wonder is very socially conscious, and he uses his music to express those feelings. He often celebrates black people, but the overriding theme is his compassion for all peoples.
Try listening with a different mindset. I am very glad I did. I have found something wonderful.
The Retinal Prosthesis Project has a lot of info about the technology. The doctor and university which are mentioned in the Stevie Wonder news reports are mentioned several places there.
I don't know how fast the processing would have to be to be realtime, but from what I know of the retina it should not be all that difficult.
You can find the cat's eye discussion right here on Slashdot. Just do a search for cat eye optic nerve.
As you can see,, Slashdot is getting more sophisticated and trying to be funny by bashing Microsoft just doesn't work anymore, like it did before. Nice try, go post something else to increase your pathetic karma.
The retina has some significant processing power of it's own...Both edge and movement detection are performed in the rear-most layer of the retina as a pre-processing step before the information is moved up the optic nerve.
...and you left out everything below the cerebrum...The optic nerve feeds into the LGN (the expanded form of which is difficult to spell), which performs a great deal of processing in it's own right--it was, after all, the primary visual system for millions of years--including further (much more refined) edge and movement detection, some object recognition, attention, etc.
;-)
This preprocessed information only goes directly to the old subcortical vision systems. The primary visual cortex (which is where your "conscious" vision is) gets its data directly from the retina as a raw monochrome image plus low-resolution colour data, which is mixed in at a higher level, about where groups of edges and junctions get merged into identifiable surfaces.
I believe you are referring to the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (this is off the top of my head so I can't guarantee the spelling). This has taken centre stage in subcortical processing studies lately as the old notion of the so-called "limbic system" as a complete and discrete subsystem has lost favour.
The subcortical visual processing pathways which evolved in our premammalian ancestors are an entirely separate issue from the conscious vision I was talking about in my previous post. The subcortical pathways are almost completely hardwired according to instructions in our genes, and they don't carry an awful lot of information: just very basic notification of possible threats (eg there's something moving towards you very quickly: predator!) and possible rewards (something moving away from you very quickly: prey!).
The result of that is forwarded to the cortex for the final processing we all know and love, which extends the capabilities of the retina and LGN greatly. However, by that stage the input has virtually no resemblance to the output from the retina, having been thoroughly digested by the lower visual systems.
You imply that the visual cortex gets all or most of its input from the LGN. You have it completely wrong I'm afraid. There isn't any room for doubt about this; the primary visual cortex is probably the most intensively studied region of the brain and the description I gave of cortical vision in my previous post is at least broadly correct. the data definitely comes direct from the retina.
The old subcortical sensory pathways evolved without having any substantial cortex to talk to. Their primary output is to subcortical switching centres like the thalamus, and from there on to affective systems such as motor areas in the cerebellum, autonomic systems in the brain stem regulating breathing, heart rate etc, and the adrenal response. These are relatively inflexible hardwired reflex systems - instinctive responses - originally developed for our simpler ancestors.
The way that the cortex has been overlaid on top of that is to provide a parallel (and almost completely independent) set of alternative pathways with their own (cortical) information processing. And, as we all know, these cortical pathways are the ones that make us intelligent, perceptive - and, dare I say it - conscious.
Now, there are secondary pathways swapping data between the subcortical and cortical systems, but these are very high level and, as you very conveniently pointed out:
One further interesting tidbit: the descending pathways, from the cortex to the LGN, have 10x the capacity of the ascending pathways. Make of that what you will.
In other words, these bandwidth-limited ascending pathways represent a pretty trifling quantity of information passed on to the visual cortex from the LGN. It's a highly condensed "risk analysis" passed upwards for mixing in with the detailed sensory picture provided by the cortex to give it some emotional coloration. It adds an "Aaaaargh!!" factor to the beautiful scene of that huge muscular golden lioness bounding towards you.
The descending pathways are broader because they represent the cortex's afferent output, which is the whole point of having a cortex in the first place. These pathways feed into the old reflex pathways to modulate instinctive behaviour with intelligence and experience. Some of them are used when you "steel" yourself to do something which takes courage, or whenever you exert any kind of self-control against your base animal urges. The ones coming from deep inside the visual cortex carry learned information, (in this case, patterns representing recognised elements of a scene, such as a face you know) via the LGN to various midbrain structures where it acquires an emotional context (the face of a loved one or of a hated enemy). Whereupon appropriate signals are sent out to the hypothalamus, the brain stem etc. to prepare the body for the appropriate physical response.
(Incidentally, there are a number of us who are trying to combat cerebral chauvinism in neuroscience, and you aren't helping
Well, what can I say? Cortex roolz! It's what makes us human.
Seriously, it's obvious that you're fairly well read but you have to careful not to identify too closely with certain researchers' narrow preoccupations.
Subcortical neurology explains most of the behaviour of lower animals. It also helps us to understand a lot of human behaviour; there's no doubt that it affects us deeply, we are still basically animals precisely because of it. However it cannot explain those parts of our experience and behaviour which make us different form other animals. Our conscious lives - our language, our appreciation for music, art, good food; our thirst for knowledge, our complex sexuality - these all belong in the information-rich cortex.
Please have a look at William H Calvin's web site, he has (I think all of) his books online there. His background is in spinal and cerebellar neurons but he has a brilliant theory of cortical processing which goes a long way to explaining how discrimination of complex stimuli, conscious and subconscious thought, memory, learning and language all work at a neuronal and cell-assembly level. I particularly recommend How Brains Think to start with.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
PLEASE... racist, joke deleted.... Get over yourself. Since when does circumstantial humour == racism.
The joke is funny. I laughed when I first heard it many years ago. But it is offensive and demeaning to black people (as if you didn't know).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The story is false. (duh)
Woa! Stevie Wonder has been a KEY PLAYER in the development of sound and music technology. First of all is anyone knows anything about midi or sampling, you owe most of the modern wonders of sampled waveforms to Stevie. He has thrown money into wonderful projects such as the Kurzweil line of keyboards, as well as giving money to several start up companies that eventually failed, but whose engineers went on to pioneer the soundest for the Amiga, Advanced Logic Audio, and a dozen other top plays in the multimedia and music production field. His contributions in the development of synthesizers and college aged dreamers are to be commended. I don't have proper links off hand (at work) but I can easily obtain stories upon stories of advancements made as a direct result of his ideas as well as the amount of money he gave/lent to tinker's.
Just thought I would throw a line out there for those who don't know, and personally I don't care much for his music.
bortbox
yep, look at the mars Global Polar lander, very reliable equipment...
Ping.... timeout.... 100% packet loss.
Not to mention the Climate Orbiter.
Theres $250,000,000 down the toilet.
Perhaps MS with IBM and HP can make their own , IT_SPACE_CORP, and launch 10 missions a year and sell all the results and make a profit faster than nasa can.
--
"You mean im black!?!?!?!"
"God damn I can go to nudy bars now."
From all that I have read, everything I could find, the chip's use is focused on people who slowly lost vision due to disease. Stevie has been blind from birth, therefore, implanting the chip on his retina would be against the norm for what the researchers are testing.
I think this Yahoo! article gives a good overview of his background, including his blindness.
Stevie Wonder at Yahoo!
For those of you who haven't seen this acting masterpiece - you should. Both the lead actors preform to their utmost, acting off of each other better than I've seen either act independantly. But besides that, the movie demonstrates some biogenic nanotech. (If you don't want to know what happens, skip to next paragraph.) The characters played by Trivolta and Cage have their faces (skin, etc) removed and put on the other. One is a cop, and is having it done to protect LA. The other is a criminal, and planted a bomb in LA. The plot thickens.
Basically, the cop gets fairly screwed over due to this technology. His family gets the blunt end of the stick, and he gets to spend some high quality time in a high security prision, amongst other things. The whole ordeal backfires into the face of the Good Guy (tm).
My point is, there is extreme danger behind any proposed good technology. I'd love to see nanotech and nanotech related technology used for medacine - or for anything, really.
Think about it! Say upi were tp get a small chip installed in your eye. Say you have 80/20, astigmatism, and a binocularity problem. (me). This chip, in combination with laser surgery in your retina, could allow you to not only see better than you would with perfect vision, but you could also have supernatural visual abilities, so to speak. You may not even need the laser surgery. Just a chip. A small chip about the size of a dime (that's kinda large, actually) planted in your face, maybe in your nasal cavity or somewhere that it would be easily maintained. (comparatively). In a couple years, it could have IR and even night vision - for the right price. The ability to zoom in on anything would be an obvious feature. Imagine being able to see for miles with the acuity of looking at your own hands.
Add in a little additional processing power and programming, and you'd be able to possibly view things as an entire object, increasing your visual perseption tenfold. No longer would you have to focus on a single object. Your peripheral vision could have just as much acuity as what you're looking directly at. Items at different distances would not be "out of focus" because they are not what you are looking at directly.
Yeah, there's evil out there - more and more each day. But there's also countless Good that can be done. The people with not-so-honest intents will get ahold of the technology eventually - most likely through the labs of a country like China or that of the lovely Saddam. We might as well get this technology into the hands of Those Who Do Good ASAP so that we can get as much good done before evil takes a chance. Besides, nanotech is fun.
Crap. I just typed a lot for 2am Saturday. Woohoo!
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Will he get an implant or just wear a banana comb across his eyes?
I'd consider upgrading to a retna the could see IR if I could do it without losing resolution.
I dont think that a ccd camera with each pixel connected to a nerve in the optic cord would work because your retina actualy has done a bunch of computation before the image is passed on. Your eye actualy finds edges at different orientations and light areas surrounded by dark areas. It does more than that, but I dont have any examples to give. If you could do those computations and then feed the resulting signal to the brain you would have a much better chance of it learning to see again. An interesing thing to note here is that there is a wavelett (I think called the Marr wavelet) that apparently maps directly to neuron activation in the brain. That is, given an image the human brain reacts with the same activation levels that you get when you process the image with this wavelet. This is not a complete coincidence though. The reseacher that figured out this wavelet first looked at some of the properties of the human retina and tried to keep them in mind while also satisfying the selfsimilarity and other requirements for a wavelet. Its definitely getting interesting though. What with the recent slashdot article on direct neural recording and subsequent control over the cursor position.
Oh now thats just getting anoying, I know I was logged in when I started writing that post, but by the time I posted the message about the wavelets and what our retina does /. thought I was an AC... Hrumf.
Well that just goes to say that blind people should NOT be driving!!
I'm not sure how many of us are avid anime fans, but there is an extremely good movie out there named Ghost In The Shell. The setting is in the not-too-distant future where biomechanical enhancements are common. It is almost to the point that to be 100% human is out of the ordinary. This sets up a situation where hackers can not only telnet into someones iToaster and burn homes down but directly into someone's brain/soul (ghost).
For the skeptics, this movie does more than show how different the world will be, but how common the changes will seem.
--------
WWGD? (What Would Goku Do?)
Well, this idea does not sound all that appealing to me, in fact, appalling might be a better term that come to mind.
*snippity-do-dah*
Eventually over time, the rich will barely be rocognizable as human.
Some of us actually look forward to a time when we can upgrade these pathetic, fragile meat bodies. I'm just saddened that it is not likely to happen before I'm dead.
The appalling point that I got from your post is that there will be a new breed of discrimination once this sort of thing becomes more commonplace.
Deosyne
Well, I haven't seen anyone complain (who identified themselves as black). Looks like you're wrong, eh?
Damn the Wonders Corporation ! It's all gone !
Victims of regular casual racism don't complain every single time it happens. Besides, if the demographics of slashdot readers were anything like that of the IT industry, or of the web surfing public as a whole (a matter of public record in both cases) then black people would be under-represented here.
I'm in the right, here. I tried to do the right thing, you're behaving like an insensitive, arrogant wanker. End of conversation. +++ATH
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I wonder, did they pull the chip out of an iMac?
(That would lend an interesting new meaning to the line "you are the Apple(tm) of my eye...")
groan... sorry folks.
wcb
Hmm... I'm not quite sure what your saying could you please explain it to me?
I like beans, and you?
First off, I resent the patronizing tone of your post; there have been truly enormous flame wars started by less insulting comments than your own. With that in mind, I have temporally disabled my tact module.
...an entirely separate issue from the conscious vision I was talking about in my previous post.
This preprocessed information only goes directly to the old subcortical vision systems.
There seems to be some severe misunderstanding here. If information is processed by the retina, I fail to see where this unprocessed information you refer to would originate. Are you implying that there are two parallel circuits originating on the upper layers of the retina? If the information has been processed before it reaches the optic nerve (i.e., by the retina), how does this unprocessed information arrive at the cortex?
You imply that the visual cortex gets all or most of its input from the LGN. You have it completely wrong I'm afraid. There isn't any room for doubt about this...
Having just scanned through every neuroscience text I could my hands on, I'd say there is considerable room for doubt. Churchland, Crick and Koch (to begin with) all seem agree that the LGN has rich upward connections to the cortex in all mammals, while making little or no reference to any other pathways.
(BTW, have you considered how implausible your explanation is from an evolutionary standpoint?)
This is an immensely ironic statement. See my closing.
And, as we all know, these cortical pathways are the ones that make us intelligent, perceptive - and, dare I say it - conscious.
True, false and false, respectively.
(Snipping the lecture on the LGN....)
In other words, these bandwidth-limited ascending pathways represent a pretty trifling quantity of information passed on to the visual cortex from the LGN.
Oh, yes, that's the only possible explanation....
Well, what can I say? Cortex roolz! It's what makes us human.
*sigh*
Seriously, it's obvious that you're fairly well read but you have to careful not to identify too closely with certain researchers' narrow preoccupation's.
As opposed to you, who thoughtfully provided one reference to back his argument, and, ironically enough, a researcher who is 'preoccupied' spinal and cerebellar neurons.
As for the rest about the cortex, I would strongly suggest you read: Panksepp's Affective Neuroscience; virtually anything by Crick, Koch; Newman and Baars re. the ERTAS; Damasio as referenced by Calvin; anything by Doug Watt; or the papers here or at the ASSC's online conference about emotion before lecturing about the function of subcortical systems. (Good starting hints: your assessment interaction of emotion and sensory information is 180 degrees from the truth, and consciousness is not a cortical function.)
...is a long way off.
/. stories of the next century will probably have heated debates between the merits of Intel's Eye-tanium visual processing chip (VPC) and AMD's Athlete-on physical performance chip (PPC).
/. may even fix my registration so I can actually login and stop being an AC!
With the way things are going
We'll be able to measure our implants with benchmarking tools based on "biomarks" or "meatstones". How many tasks can I run on my new Motorola Cortex VX cranium board before I start to slow down? Does that support the Spinal (tm) bus, or the ever popular Centrally Enhanced Nervous System ?.
More importantly, will the NVidia TrueBruise technology be able to simulate real bump-mapped damage on my body when I play Quake 15? Or should I go for the 3Dfx Vindaloo which is supported by Microsoft's Direct Death API?
You never know,
Email ME!
Views expressed are mine and not necessarily those of my employer.
Wasn't this featured in a NextGeneration episode? I don't recall the name, but it was with Data being Holmes again, and his opponent wanting to get out of the holodeck - and he Data and Picard managed to have him do that, while unknowingly still being in the holodeck.
What do I want to say with this? I don't recall.
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
He has been blind since a young age, however. I wonder how much he remembers seeing...
"More organs means more human." - Zim
There is an article about it in the latest issue of the alumni magazine from Johns Hopkins (my alma mater
I was going to submit it, but this guy beat me to it. Sounds very star-trekky, doesn't it?
-m.
These chips work by stimulating the optic nerves that are left in the eye. This technology will probably never be an upgrade. Think 640 X 480 resolution for your everyday sight. Making a new interface to the brain on the other hand...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Due to a head injury from a car accident, Stevie doesn't have a sense of smell either. This happened during the early-mid 1970s. CmdrTaco, please give more respect to talented people like Stevie.
Unless people start freaking out about "unnatural" modifications, of course. I am a little worried about that laws that will start to happen when this tech gets more advanced - it's very, very, very primitive right now - how about when you could get enhanced vision? Or strain-free screens to read off of? (via a direct digital connection!)
:(
There is reason to be worried. Since our society isn't going to do away with money anytime soon, and this stuff isn't free, this could just further polarize society. Don't have those optic enhancers? Sorry, you can't be a pilot. Don't have those memory enhancers? Sorry, you can't be a scientist. We DO need very specific laws on this because the potential for misuse is so big. Our government is still clueless on the "information age", much less all the new advancements in biotech.
More importnantly, do we really want to turn ourselves in into the borg? This sounds silly now, but there isn't much discussion into the future. New tech? If it makes us money, go for it!! Damn the consequences!
Of course, a 5x5 system is only a sign of things to come. However even if it were 1000x1000, the person would not be able to do some very basic stuff (for example use a computer or watch a TV). Even though it's very cool. Nice to know that giving blind persons sight is within the reach of man kind.
Ok, i noticed noone else has mentioned this before, but is the surgery he is undergoing classed as "exparamental research and data collection" ? cause if its not and its simply testing a prototype or installing a working version, why is he getting military grade tech ?
as far as i know (and i'm into this stuff so i try to keep up with it) the only organisation to have a working prototype capable of showing more than 8 blocks by 8 blocks in 4 colours is the militry for their urban attack and counter terrorest project...
comments/corrections ?
If I recall correctly. I had been meaning to look this up, and then it suddenly hit me. I think I figured it out today or yesterday, IIRC.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
And the robot says: "In the begining was man. Man created all things. Man, with his infinite skill, created machines in his own image."
Thou shalt not create a machine in the image of a human mind!
Thou shalt not disfigure the human soul, by petty cruelty or through the creation of mockeries.
Thou shalt not corrupt the purity of thy body through unholy union with machines.
Thou shalt not corrupt the purity of thy mind with information spewed from a machine.
Thou shalt not bend thy tongue to the unholy language of machines.
Thou shalt not bow down before machines, nor serve them, nor hold one above any man.
Thou shalt burn what opposes the greater cause of humanity in the holy fire of the atom.
Remember the golem, erase aleph.
I would assume that the structures used to process visual data would either not be present in his brain, or if they were they'd be completely underused.
The brain, marvel that it is, can adapt like mad, and there's a wealth of stories in which someone gained sight when they were born blind.
At first, they're totally disoriented, since their brain hasn't the slightest clue how to process the data being thrown at it. With training and time, the brain works things out, and the person can see. After a while they see fine, as the brain adapts.
Being blind then regaining your sight doesn't mean your sight will always be screwed up. It just means there's one hell of a transitional period.
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
There's an interesting sci-fi scenario that might be relevant here. Basically, in the future, medical health technology comes to dominate society. The rich try to live forever, the poor can't, and everyone is taxed on how healthy they can stay without spending medical money. You thought the gap between rich and poor was bad before... think about what this means. Social Darwinism back in force. Is this what we want when we think of a working human society?
I've read the story you mention. The main difficulty wasn't in the fact that he wasn't "confident" enough in using his vision, it was the fact that he didn't know *how* to use his vision.
His brain, having almost no training in decoding visual images, didn't know how to do many things that we take for granted, such as determining the difference between a dog and a cat (without touching/hearing it, of course). I recall it being mentioned that learning colors was fairly easy for him, but shapes were difficult. He couldn't tell the difference between a circle and a square, for example. If anyone else is interested in this topic, the story is excellently written and is very thought-provoking. It's very interesting to imagine what sight would be like to a person who had no idea what he was seeing...
Would someone who's not had sight for his whole life, upon gaining sight, have any sexual response to sights?
How much of what we consider a "good looking member of the opposite sex" is actually based on sight, in other words?
I have no answer to suggest to this; I'm just throwing out a question that came up in my mind, after seeing this story mentioned on TV, and on another news site already tonight.
Supposedly people that lose one or more of their senses develop their other senses/talents to compensate.
Would Stevie Wonder been as successful in his musical career if he had use of his eyes?
Speaking as an extremely amateur musician (acoustic guitar), I frequently catch myself watching what my hands are doing, rather than trying to just play the guitar.
I would have thought the subject should have been something like "it's a wonder!" ... oh well, to corny i suppose ;-)
I dunno about you guys, but i just don't get stevie wonders new track. What exactly is he trying to do with this?
0 /pimpdaddywelfareelmoaintyoaveragenza.mp3
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palace/242
Meant in a lighthearted sense, really (but will probably see flames anyway). I wish him the best. Is he the first to try this as I have never heard of anything like this before? Stuff like this has been done for hearing which is far less complex than vision. I wonder... if a ccd was hooked to an eyeball with each pixel going to a single nerve in the optic nerve, could the brain be able to "learn" how to form a proper image? This is how neural nets learn right?
It's really too bad that they didn't put any of the specifications of the implant in the article. I was actually kinda disappointed, that more attention (or at least keystrokes) wasn't paid to the article.
Not that I expect this, but if anybody out there knows anything more about this story, or has another source that we can check out, perhaps with a little more detail, I'd be happy to see it.
Seems to me, that in order for it to be journalism, one should actually investigate it a little bit. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh.
"At first sight" or something like that, starring Val Kilmer. Apparently based on a true story, about a guy that lost his sight when he was just a baby (although not quite the same as being blind from birth) but then much later on in life (about 30's I think) gets it back by a new experimental operation. Pretty interesting, the way he reacts at first (total confusion to the new stimuli, being frightened by it), but after a a few weeks his brain starts to learn how to "see". He struggled a lot with many of the "higher-level" aspects of seeing, such as depth perception .. not being able to tell a picture of an object from the object itself, etc.
.. the brain "rewires" itself to handle the new information.
The brain is pretty adaptable though. I read about some experiments (can't remember the guy's name or website) where he does brain experiments with salamanders, things like adding a new eye and connecting it to the brain
Hasn't he always been blind? I don't pay too much attention to him, but I thought he's always been blind, well since a little while after birth. I think it would be good for him to see again, I just think it would be a total shock for someone who has no recollection of seeing the world to suddenly have some site.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
I wish there had been some more info in that article. I remember reading something similar to this about a year ago but they said it was EXTREMELY experimental, they were only able to get this guy to be able to see basic shapes, and that was all generated by a computer, fed the signal directly to the chip which then stimulated the optic nerve. I wonder if this is the same technology because in the article I read it said it was years and years off. If anyone knows of a place to get some more info on this please post the URL
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0169951
[ReidNews]
I have several friends who are legally blind, one who has eyesight to this level can get around town with only a cane to alert him to trip hazards, and easily do things like pick up a dropped pillow without having to fumble for it.
Even just having the ability to tell darkness from light could be worthwile, as it could be used to tell which way you are orientated in a room, by detecting where the windows are.
This is great news for all of us, even the perfect sighted. I think that one of the obstacles to development in these arenas is that the people with the expertise in one field - imaging, robotics - are rarely trained in the fields of medicine. Biomedical Engineering has the potential for many great things, and I think we're just beginning to see what can be achieved when we start engineering our bodies.
Unless people start freaking out about "unnatural" modifications, of course. I am a little worried about that laws that will start to happen when this tech gets more advanced - it's very, very, very primitive right now - how about when you could get enhanced vision? Or strain-free screens to read off of? (via a direct digital connection!)
Sound far fetched? Maybe, but then again, we were all using gopher 6 years ago.
Not going to happen, you say? Icky? Maybe. Someone that's got modifications will have a _competitive advantage_ over you, and might learn better, or faster, or be able to do more.
Welcome to the borg - friendlier, happier, but definately where we're headed. I might not live to see it.. but who knows when nanotech gets off the ground to splice into nerves :).
Kudos!
..don't panic
I can imagine extending our existing senses to ranges that they cannot currently handle, for example infrared vision, or to hear the intensity of the magnetic field, or anything similar to that, but creating a totally new sense? I can't imagine it
Well, this isn't extremely new. IIRC, there was a guy in like, the 80s who had a computer attached to his brain so he could see, and it worked. But now bionics might be getting even more attention, since Stevie Wonder's not the least known performer by far. Though I wish the article had been longer. Like a description of how the system works, or even just an overview of what will happen to him. Wonder if this'll hit all the news stations eventually...probably, if it works. If it doesn't work, methinks someone might end up getting sued. Be interesting to see how this turns out.
These are popular words used by people outside the profession. (Although I think "caries" sounds silly). Cybernetic might be a better replacement term acceptable to both those in and out of the profession. Besides, who can mention "bionic" and not think of Lee Majors and that tah-tah-tah-tah sound effect or Lindsey Wagner crushing a tennis ball in her hand? Some terms are best forgotten.
Following that last post, I decided that instead of continuing this flamewar indefinately, I'd actually do some quick research on the web. The following is what I pulled off the first few pages of Yahoo! and Hotbot when I searched for "LGN cortex".
Here: "The LGN organizes inputs from the retina, and slows them down before sending signals to the ocipital lobe (the visual cortex)."
Here: "Incoming sensory signals are not simply relayed to the cerebral cortex. Instead, these afferent signals are first actively gated and modified in the thalamus. Our research is focused on understanding the modulation of visual signals in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), the thalamic station in the pathway that subserves conscious visual perception. The LGN presents a single locus where vision, in a broad sense, can be impacted economically before visual signals are disseminated throughout the cortex. All subsequent cortical processing depends critically upon the nature of the signals that are conveyed by the LGN."
Here: "...to learn how information transmission from the retina to the visual cortex through the LGN is controlled."
This shows the information pathways involved in visual processing: retina-Pretectal area, retina-Superior Colliculus, retina-LGN and LGN-cortex.
There were others, but Netscape crashed (naturally) and I don't want to restep the entire search process.
Retina: I meant to check for info on retinal processing, but the search engines are clogged with retina simulators and other unhelpful pages. But I did find this which mentions the preprocessing of which I was speaking in my first post.
Christopher Reeve has done way more for attracting attention (and $$) for research in neuron regeneration and spinal cord injuries than any number of scientists could!
How do you suppose Bill will leverage this one to force the OS to be wince? (Oops, 'Windoze powered...' :)
:)
Will we be seeing warnings like:
"I'm sorry, but I've patented sight, you'll need to pay a royalty everytime you open your eyes."
"What do you want to see today?"
"MSEyes have detected a change in your field of vision. You must reboot for these changes to become visible."
"You must now install the new 'Eye patch 2.0' Service Pack. Please stare directly at your monitor while the next web page loads."
Will M/$ force a browser to be integrated?
Does BSOD become BEOD? Blue Eyes Of Death? (I've known some women who already have this capability.)
Will it be compiled by "Visual See++?"
Additional Function?:
Make the infrared receiver a transceiver with input from the muscles around the eye so that you can change the channel on your TV or turn the stereo volume up and down with a blink.
Does this mean that I can reprogram it with my Palm IIIx?
Just some points to ponder...
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
nt
http: //wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ART S&STORYID=APIS7146D4G0
Don't have perfect vision, sorry you can't be a pilot. Don't have a college degree, sorry you can't be a scientist. Hello there. Discrimination based on job performance related criteria (qualifications) is Necesary. What is genetically elitist is to intentionally deny access to qualifications to those who aren't lucky enough to be born with them.
Here's an interesting question: Could we "manufacture" new senses for ourselves?
For someone who has never seen, that's exactly what this would be like - you make an input device sensitive to our visible light spectrum, feed it into his brain, and it hopefully learns over time to interpret the signals until he has another sense that just feels natural.
I see no reason to believe that the human brain is not adaptive enough to add new arbitrary senses. Of course, I am no expert in such things and if any of you out there are, please correct me.
Imagine the possibilities though - anything that we currently make equipment for! We could have a new device that would help us to "sense" our global position via GPS, radiation levels in the area, supersonic or subsonic viabrations, and so on...
And of course we can't forget the obvious - an infrared sensor with that certain sony handycam kind of filter. Clothes, begone!
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
First Post
nuff said.
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Naw. As soon as becomes a useful (albeit expensive) technology, you know what will happen?
Easy - someone like Alladvantage will come along and pay for your surgery. In return, you'll have to put up with a small bar at the bottom of your vision containing paid-for advertising. It's only off when you're asleep (maybe) or perhaps for a few user-selectable hours each day - enough so that you can get a rest or drive or something. The rest of the time, your vision is auctioned off to the highest bidder. Younger people would be more desirable, as more ad impressions would be possible.
Sound kind of sick? Well, maybe. But you know that someone will think of it, for better or for worse.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
"News For Nerds: Stuff That Matters"
If there are stories about any other musicians, my bet is that there is a link to some sort of technology or another type of geek-bait involved.
Why is everyone so damned over-sensitive? Sheesh!
(And yes, for the record, I'm not that impressed by S.W.'s music. On the other hand, I don't care much for The Who either. I just don't think Taco meant it as a put-down)
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Speak for yourself - it was funny. :>
If he gets his eye op done he can star in movies:
;-P
Star Trek (as a Borg or a replacement for Jordi Laforge)
Terminator (new cyborg)
..and other suggestions ?
Should shut up really, I'm hoping to have my crappy vision sorted out by LASIK in February
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Also, I thought Stevie Wonder was born blind.
Even if so, stimulating the working part of the eye-nerve will provide vision.
The problem he has translates from latin as "coloured retina". Retina is the part of the eye that translates photons into nerve-pulses.
So probably a part that is normally transparent to let the light through is now opague.
Roger.
This chip only works on people who still have some undamaged tissue in their eye. You still have to scientifically be able to see - your rods and cones have to function - and all this chip does is restore some broken links in the pathway from eye to brain. Wonder's eyes are too far gone for this to be possible. This treatment has helped certain blind people to regain minimal sight, but it won't help Stevie Wonder. I still don't really know why the media ate this one up. Star power I guess. Anyways, it won't happen.
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
this has some interesting info. on retinal implants etc.
"Now normally a Stevie Wonder story probably wouldn't make it on Slashdot..."
;-).
Anything about The Who, on the other hand, would be immediately posted without hesitation
This is truly interesting. So we finally have devices that can interact directly with our optical nerves without actually using light. The Matrix begins to sound more plausible now... kidnap someone, blind them, install (a more advanced, color version of) this device and feed VR into it. They'd never know what happened to their world. Nah... this sounds too corny :-) But devices like these do present interesting possibilities, though.
(Disclaimer: it's way past my bedtime...)
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
I do have a few concerns though. The biggest being that I would like to have surgery to correct my vision, but it is quite expensive. I am wondering if one would have to have Stevie Wonder's fortune to afford such an infinetely more complicated procedure such as the implant of a chip into your eye? If it is to be horribly expensive will insurance cover it?
My second concern is that we will have people with good eyesight getting chips put in to get better eyesight. I don't want to see the age where we all are computerized people. Lord knows the human body isn't an unbreakable machine, but it is far more durable than a computer, I mean what if your eye or arm shorts out for some reason, then you have what was a perfectly good eye/arm going haywire because you wanted it to be better.
Aw, well I guess I am over reacting, I don't think that we will see healthy people getting these soon, and I have always felt sorry for people with such large disabilities as blindness and paralysis. If this technology can help those people to see or walk again than it would be worth the abuse that it could potential have.
By the way, in the above paragraph I just sort of looked into the future about fixing the paralyzed people, the article from ZD was very short, does anyone know if this eye chip technology could help spinal chord injuries and such as well?
this might help http://rleweb.mit.edu/retina
I heard some things about implanting electronic eyes before but they were incredibly bad resolution (4 pixels) have they improved this?
Secondly does he see the same colors we do? The human eye distingushes color by only three components (RGB) rather then the full frequency spectrum (hence why you can differnt wavelenghts to get similar colors).
There are plenty of examples of cases this isn't true (for instance cameras expose as greenish in florescent lights. If it is still a very small resolution infared might be more useful to distingush people and so forth.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
A better article is at http://www.cnn.com/1999/ SHOWBIZ/Music/12/03/stevie.wonder/.
Most Links!
And the robot says: "In the begining was man. Man created all things. Man, with his infinite skill, created machines
If it works, more power to him. But I don't recall ever hearing about any real-world trials of anything like this before; is this a new thing?
Also, I thought Stevie Wonder was born blind. Considering his age, being able to see is probably going to take a LOT of getting used to (who knows; after so many years of being blind, suddenly gaining sight could very well drive a person insane through the relative sensory overload). I wish him the best of luck, though.
Come to think of it, the only way we'll ever really be able to know if this works as well as "normal" human vision is to try it on someone who wasn't born blind, so that person can compare. It'll certainly be interesting to see (pardon the pun) how such an experiment would turn out.
Wait, one last thing. Where exactly do they plan to put this chip? Putting it physically inside the eye would probably not be a Good Thing. Unless you put it on the optic disk it'd block part of the retina, and the chip complete with neural interfaces would probably be too big to fit over the disk.
I had the same line of thought...If Rob wants this to be a better Nerd site, I suggest making fewer personal opinionated comments on the story, especially with regards to things like music.
I personally don't think there's such a thing as bad music, as long as the person composing it actually liked the music. There's music that I don't like, and music that you don't like, but essentially, music is an expression of thought. Nobody can say that the musician is bad unless that musician has specific goals and isn't reaching them. For instance, a composer writing for his/her own enjoyment can't do anything wrong and be "bad". However, a musician trying to get on the top 30 of the week *can* fail. As long as there's somebody else out there appreciating the music, I think the musician would be pleased.
<tim><
Q. Have you seen Stevie Wonder's piano?
A. Neither has he.
This version seems to have more of a "kick" for me.
<tim><
Professor Graeme Clark developed the bionic ear, also called the Cochlear Implant, in the 1970s. This can give hearing to the deaf. Hopefully somebody will be able to do the same thing for the blind.
It's not about being over-sensitive, it's about respect. I too, think that the storyline could've been written without the slant against Stevie. I, also, don't care for his music, but like Uche said, he's a popular musician for his talent and help for advances in technology for the blind.
<tim><
Stevie wondre is my favorit, he has mad brotha beatsz. He is supa leet and i want to be like hium and when i am sober;
pee sess. ? last post!
ez
_.......................__
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||......_\\.(/_'..||....||-//.//.\\.(/_'..||
||__((_||_,_/).||_..||....\\_//.,_/).\\_
The final word; anything following is redundant.
Yeah, but dude, you realize that none of us ever had any eyesight except our own. Since there in no good way to qualify the way things look (hot-cold and a few more being the best you can get for colors).
Fact is, what looks like a sunset to you, might be what I see in a frying pan, and what Stevie Wonder sees as Rob Maldas face. Could explain why I preffer breakfast to a romantic outing...
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
I've never been able to smell. Yes, I can taste. Whenever someone asks me about it, they can never understand...I just don't know how to smell, or what it would be like. Sometimes I'm amazed at some of the things that DO have smells. Its a foreign word to me. However, I don't believe I'd ever want to go into the world of the smelling people. It would simply overwhelm me. Its scary thinking there's another dimention to how you live that others take for granted. Sure, my subconscious brain could get used to smelling if we found a cure, but would I want that, consciously? I don't know. And I don't particularly want to find out :) If techniques for bringing back sight are developed, I think it will be interesting to see how these people react...I mean, someday it could be a doctor telling me I could smell (i know, i know, not of the same magnitude, but the same idea)
Stevie Wonder is actually a laser robot droid sent to assimilate the planet for the evil forces of Skulltor! The implant is a mere upgrade to allow him to project holographic images of diet coke cans up to five hundred feet away!
RUN! RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!
this is a sig.
Maybe in the future we can give people super vision or something. It'd be interesting to see how these types of implants do for us in the future. Using similar devices, one day we might be able to cure paralysis by installing some kind of electrical signal re-router in people's spines to make up for damaged nerves, and who knows what else.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
An Excite story explains this whole situation a lot better. Slashdot should really demand better citations.
It turns out Wonder has not made any public statements regarding the procedure. A tabloid reported that he told a congregation that he was planning on getting his site back, but the doctor that is running the clinic has said he has not made an apoitment. Besides, an examination would have to be done first to see if he is even a candidate. Still pretty cool even if Wonder is not planning the procedure.
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I'm just a young tike (still in high school) so...why is Stevie Wonder blind? I realize he was born that way...but what congenital affliction is this?
Also, hm. I really would like more information on this article. It seems to me that vision would be far too alien a sense for him; I've read cases like this. Hang on, let me find the book...
Okay. It's Oliver Sacks' book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat". It details probably about 20 cases Dr. Sacks, a noted neurologist, treated, got to know, and gained valuable insight from. (He's a heckuva writer--check out his books if you're interested in the brain and the mind that drives it.)
A man named Virgil (I believe it was--I can't find the book right now) was blind from the time he was a young child; he had an operation when he was 50 or 60 that restored his vision, and at first, he was able to see vibrantly, clearly, like a new window of existence reopened after many years.
He visited his childhood home, and even though he was like 2 or 3 when his vision went, he could see most clearly the things he remembered, such as a fence and a field, I believe. (Again, I can't find the book; please correct me if I'm wrong!;] )
However, when he returned back to his home in a city, it began to be harder and harder for him to use his sight confidently. He'd resort to closing his eyes and acting "blind" because he was the most confident this way--traffic rushing by him made him nervous and indecisive.
Eventually, due to a combination of psychological and physical factors, his vision deteriorated again. I don't know if he's still around or not, but it would be kinda cool to meet someone like that.
I dunno. It'd be interesting to find out how Stevie Wonder turns out. I'd HATE to have a chip in my eye. Contacts bother me enough.
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
This brings up a kind of interesting allusion to Star Trek. I always thought Geordi's visor was pretty amazing. Not only did it cure his blindness, but it was like an entire set of military-type scopes: infra-red, night vision, all sorts of odd but useful things.
Once this technology that's going into Wonder gets refined to the point where it actually has a decent resolution, I can't imagine it would be that hard to implement a bunch of different sensors/cameras for it. In fact, they might even be able to develop some sort of (waterproof, hopefully, to prevent shorts) external connector, and actually create a visor like Geordi's =)
Looks like a piece of Star Trek technology could become a reality in our lifetimes, eh?
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
As others have mentioned, Stevie Wonder has never had eyesight. No matter what results the experiments bring, he will be unabled to measure them against a remembered standard.
He might see everything upside down, or in 2d or in shades of green, and to him that would seem like complete success. Heck, all he might see is a rotating Head of Rob Malda and he would give the thumbs up "Is that what a sunset looks like? It's beautiful!"
I wish him luck. Can you imagine your world suddenly expanding to include another sense?
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!