DailyDirt: Visions Of The Future

Bleeding Edge

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Digital cameras are getting better all the time, but our natural vision only seems to degrade over time. (Almost everyone over forty years old will suffer from some kind of presbyopia.) There may be technological solutions to improving human vision, but so far, projects like Google Glass are more about augmenting vision, not necessarily improving a user’s sight. Here are just a few interesting projects working on useful eye prosthetic devices.

• Paul Bach-y-Rita is a neuroscientist working on brain plasticity, studying how various senses can be re-mapped in the brain. People with vision problems might be able to learn how to see via tongue sensations. The brain might be able to process visual information in many different ways. [url]
• A retinal implant that could allow the completely blind to perceive light and shapes is in early trials — in rats. There are several kinds of retinal implants that could potentially help people with degenerative retinal diseases, but the technology is still primitive compared to natural vision. [url]
• Sheila Nirenberg’s TED talk on eye prosthetics describes how technology could be used to help the blind see again. Nirenberg’s strategy to create software that can translate signals (from images) into input that the brain can understand could also be useful for other senses like hearing. [url]
• Steve Mann has been wearing a camera attached to his head for quite some time now — as an exploration of wearable computing. Recently, though, he was assaulted for wearing a digital camera, and he’s blogged about his experience trying to live in a society that may not be ready for people wearing personal computer vision systems. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: blind, brain plasticity, eye, low vision, presbyopia, prosthetics, retinal implants, senses, sight, steve mann, vision, visually impaired