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.

Comments

Another, fairly informative article

[Ford Prefect]

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.

Sign of things to come..

[xtal]

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!

More detailed article

[athom]

A better article is at http://www.cnn.com/1999/ SHOWBIZ/Music/12/03/stevie.wonder/.

Some Related Links

[_Dante_]

Here are some links I found with more information on this 'chip' thing:

• The Retinal Implant Project useful interesting background on this or a similar operation
• An article on the same at ABCNews (in laymans terms)
• More info here
• Finally, a paper on the chip.

Most Links! :)