The Goth Club

I am consistently amazed at some of the technological innovations we have come up with in the past decade. I actually wanted to give this post something about “NeoSapien” or “Post Human” in the title, but no one has a fucking clue what those terms mean most of the time.

Stop and think about this for just a moment: The 16gb MicroSD card that you can put in your phone can hold all the information that the internet contained a dozen years ago… twice over. This is something the size of your pinky finger’s nail, and it holds basically 2 DVDs worth of information, is fast, reliable and re-writeable. It’s power requirements are low enough that it can be powered by waste heat from a human body, or just the electrical impulses travelling along nerve tissue.

So when I hear about other inventions, which I will talk about below, I sit back and gape in wonder… Then I wonder about how I could possibly tie it all in with a giant, death dealing robot that has a bubble on top of it that I can sit in and laugh as people flee in terror.

So what are some of these other inventions I’m talking about? Direct Mind-Machine Interfacing (MMI) for the most part. Cameras to replace eyes and communicate that information to the brain and record it, limb replacement or enhancement via cybernetics, and even VR is making a comeback!

However, I want to stretch this out in to a few different posts so there’s some regular content, and people aren’t going “Bleh! too long, did not read!”

This week: Replacing your pathetic human eyes

My introduction to all of this sort of thing was actually the Ghost in the Shell series, by Masamune Shirow. He is basically Japan’s answer to William Gibson.

In GitS, the character Batou (played for laughs in the books, but a tragic romance in the TV series) has had his eyes, among other parts, replaced with electronic substitutes far superior to natural eyes. Whilst this may seem horrific to some people, ask anyone with well below average vision if they wouldn’t mind having camera lenses permanently attached to their face if it meant not only having their sight back, but the ability to record, zoom, etc. Most regularly sighted people would probably be willing to trade in for some extra features too if they were being honest with themselves.

This is now becoming a real possibility. At first, we had a wave of breakthroughs a few years ago withelectronic retinal implant. Combined with the ever shrinking world of electronics (notice the SD card chart above?), it’s now possible to forego the eye completely an just cram a camera in the socket of where an eye is missing, or perhaps even purposefully removed.

A number of videographers are doing just that. Remember in the earlier half of the decade when some clever saps decided to attach cameras to their hats and carry a laptop and stream their life? With those guys, at least you could see them coming, and maybe punch them in the back to end transmission. Going to be a little harder from now on, especially as there’s a social stigma about punching people in the face if they formerly wore glasses but are now carrying thousands of dollars of delicate electronic equipment in their face that you might accidentally shunt into their brain for popping them a well deserved one, those weirdo cyborg freaks *breathes*.

Rob Spence from Canada, and Tanya Vlach from the USA, have both lost eyes and are both tech savvy arteeeests. They are intending on replacing said missing eyes with cameras for both artistic and sociological reasons… Notice how there’s always something “sociology” when someone’s thinking about invading every one else’s privacy?

This all brings up a number of really interesting implications in my mind, mostly ethical ones which I won’t deign to bore you all with.

1. If you get really plastered, what happens to the vision being piped in from the artificial eye? Clearly the alcohol won’t affect the blood vessels or aqueous humor as there is none, but does vision in it go all wonky too, as your brain no longer interfaces with the circuits correctly?
2. If your eyes look natural enough, and someone pays you a compliment about how pretty they look, do you leave it as is? Or do you tell them where they can go and buy a pair for themselves?
3. If you’re streaming the footage live to the web and forget to turn it off when you start getting it on with someone, will you have your Stickam account cancelled for inappropriate content?
4. Do you get the good parking spots because you’re technically disabled? You shouldn’t, because you’ve been “repaired” and not really disabled any longer.
5. Could you jack an auxillary input, and watch porno directly to your brain without anyone noticing?

A bit of beginners reading for those that want it, over at Wikipedia & YouTube:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthesis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0apm2NnNx8

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