For those who are transhumanist aware, this Sep 2002 article is about a man who has undergone brain surgery to implant electrodes so that a camera can stimulate vision. I found it to be quite inspirational. However, ya gotta wonder if Steven, the author, got a little carried away with the dramatic seizure scenario. An interesting article nonetheless. How Jens lost his sight is one hell of a story in itself. And the possibility of replacing the "simple camera" with something more, is downright heartening!
If you don't have time to read the whole article(5pages), I've cliped the juice below. - BJK
Vision Quest
A HALF CENTURY OF ARTIFICIAL-SIGHT RESEARCH HAS SUCCEEDED. AND NOW THIS BLIND MAN CAN SEE.
By Steven Kotler
Frank W. Ockenfels 3The Dobelle artificial vision system feeds images from a digital camera to a belt-mounted signal processor.
I'M SITTING ACROSS FROM A BLIND MAN — CALL HIM PATIENT Alpha — at a long table in a windowless conference room in New York. On one end of the table there's an old television and a VCR. On the other end are a couple of laptops. They're connected by wires to a pair of homemade signal processors housed in unadorned gunmetal-gray boxes, each no bigger than a loaf of bread. In the corner stands a plastic ficus tree, and beyond that, against the far wall, a crowded bookshelf. Otherwise, the walls are white and bare. When the world's first bionic eye is turned on, this is what Patient Alpha will see.
All I can do is stare. The man has computer jacks sunk into both sides of his skull.
On the far side of the pedestal, buried beneath hair and skin, is the wetware: a pair of brain implants. Each one is the size of a fat quarter, a platinum electrode array encased in biocompatible plastic.
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"The next version," Dobelle tells me, "may have enough resolution to use while driving in traffic." In fact, since this is only a simple camera we're talking about, one could imagine the addition of any number of superhuman optical features: night vision, X-ray vision, microscopic focus, long-range zoom. Forget the camera even; there's no reason you couldn't jack directly into the Net. In the future, the disabled may prove more abled; we may all want their prostheses.
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PUBLIC DISCUSSION OF ELECTRICITY'S EFFECT ON VISION dates to 1751, when it was addressed by Benjamin Franklin following his celebrated kite-and-key experiment. Despite some advocates, the idea of treating blindness through electrical stimulation did not catch on.
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Dobelle leads one of a dozen teams spread out over four continents racing ahead with all sorts of artificial-vision systems. There are teams working on battery-powered retinal implants and solar-powered retinal implants, and teams growing ganglion cells on silicon chips, and teams working on optic-nerve stimulators. And there is Dick Normann, the former head of the University of Utah's Department of Bioengineering, who up until Dobelle's success was among the front-runners.
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